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SCIENT! FICTION 




mil OF THE FUTURE 



A THRILLING 
PUBLICATION 













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An Amazing Complete Novel 

The Laws of Chance 



By MURRAY LEINSTER 

Survivors in a bomb-blasted land, Steve Sttm 
and “Lucky” Connors discover that they alone 
possess the miracle mineral which can head 
America to the pinnacle of victory in the 
strangest and deadliest of all worst*, .. 13 



A Hall of Fame Novelet 

WHEN PLANETS CLASHED .... .. Manly Wade WetyjMR ID 

A brilliant ScieuttBctioa Classic of interplanetary war, in which the 
Martians invade the Earth — reprinted by popular dematm 



Short Stories 



THE SOMA RACKS . . . — ... . . Margaret St. Ctefc- 65 

Oona, wife of the future, wearies of her husband’s lethargy 

STELLAR SNOWBALL '..Jolin Bawett 88 

A girl stowaway and a pirate keep things humming on the Cyrex 



Special Features 

THE ETHER VIBRATES Announcements and Letters 6 

REVIEW OF FAN PUBLICATIONS Sergeant Saturn 106 

MEET THE AUTHOR A Department 1« 

Cover Painting by Rudolph Belarski — Illustrating “The Laws of Chance” 



STARTLING STORIES, published every other mouth by Better Publications, Inc., N. It, Pines, President, at 4000 Diverse? 
Ave., Chicago 39, HI. Editorial and executive offices, 10 East 40fch St., New York 16, N. Y. Entered as second class matter 
September 29, 1938, at the post office at Chicago, Illinois, under the act of March 3. 18T9. Copyright, 1947, by Better Ihuw*- 
cations, Inc. Subscription (12 issues), $1.80; single copies, $.15 1 - foreign and Canadian postage extra. In corresponding wRU 
this magazine please include your postal zone number, if any. Manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied by self -ad- 
dressed stamped envelope and are submitted at the author's risk. Names of all characters used in stories and semi- Action 
articles are fictitious. If the name of a living person or existing institution is used, it is a coincidence. 

Companion magazines: ThrliHng Wonder Stories, Popular Western, Thrilling Mystery Novel, Thrilling Western, Thrilling Love, 
Thrilling Detective, Rodeo Romances, The Phantom Detective, Sky Fighter*, Popular Deteotlve, Thrilling Ranch Stories, 
Thrilling Sports, Popular Sports Magazine, Range Riders Western, Texas BUngect, Everyday Astrology. G-Men Detective. 
0£tectlve Novel Magazine, Black Book Detective, Popular Love, Matted Rlder Western, Rio Kld W wtern, Exciting Western, 
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I N THE not-so-distant future, the big 200- 
inch telescope will be in operation atop 
Mount Palomar in California, bringing 
such Systemic neighbors as Mars and Venus 
and Mercury under closer scrutiny than ever 
before and putting the moon scarcely further 
away than the average cirrus cloud layer. 

Therefore it seems probable that, if any 
form of what humanity can recognize as life 
exists or has existed and left monuments be- 
hind it on any planets excepting our own, we 
shall find soon some indication of it. At least 
we may know whether the canals of Mars are 
canals or what- all and, perhaps, whether 
they are of artificial creation. 

Thus one of the great dreams of all pseudo 
and real science fanatics may well be ap- 
proaching fulfillment. Aind if the big 200 -inch 
telescope at Mount Palomar fails to bring 
the planets sufficiently close for the answer, 
then some other development of modern 
science should not be long in so doing. 
Conquest of at least limited space, directly 
by projectile or indirectly by lens, is indeed 
close upon us. 

All erf which may shortly eliminate one of 
the major problems that has confronted the 
author of interplanetary stories since the 
earliest days of such writing — or at any rate 
from the Lapute of Jonathan Swift, the 
irascible dean of Dublin University. 

Lacking any yardstick of actuality, he has 
been forced to create life upon alien planets 
in a mold intelligible to humanity. Swift, for 
instance, kept his Laputans human, if highly 
eccentric. Only in his horses of the final 
Gulliver story, the houyymmrms and the re- 
pulsive yahoos, did he essay a step out of con- 
ventional human frame, and here he gave 
his quadrupeds unmistakable traits of homo 
sapiens. 

Jules Verne stuck to people, no matte 
where he took them. His trip to the center 
of the Earth, his journey on the comet, his 
Captain Nemo, all involved people cut in 
two-dimensional cartoon shapes. Buiwer- 



Lytton, on the other hand, dealt more in 
psychic forces but recognizable as stemming 
directly from human ghost legends and the 
like. 

In his “War of the Worlds” H. G. Wells first 
attempted the creation of alien invaders — 
but he made them recognizable in human 
terms by fitting them out with the bodies of 
giant squids and with temperaments to match. 
So these, again, cannot really be termed 
utterly alien. 

Edgar Rice Burroughs, in his John Carter 
yarns, stuck to humanity and to mutations 
on a level which has little variation from 
that achieved by the authors of Flash Gordon 
and Brick Bradford in the current cOmic 
strips. And Murray Leinster in not-so-far- 
back THRILLING WONDER STORIES 
created an octopus viewing an alien batho- 
spheric humanity in the memorable “De Pro- 
fundis” — but viewing it with emotions that 
ware very human if very well disguised. 

It is only when confronted by life as alien 
as insects that our authors achieve their pur- 
pose. And the insect life of the average back 
yard or apartment — insecticides to the con- 
trary — is ample enough to afford them plenty 
of concrete examples. 

So it seems probable that our authors will 
not achieve their aims at representing ex- 
istence on an extra-human plane until they 
are confronted with the same in measurable 
actuality. And the big ’scope atop Mount 
Palomar represents another great stride to- 
ward realization of this actuality. It should 
be plenty interesting. 



OUR NEXT ISSlft 

T HE novel whlfch is to lead the May issue 
of STARTLING STORIES is one that 
Henry Kuttner addicts (as who isn’t?) will 
not only welcome with cries of delight, but 
will cherish long after the final page is turned. 
(Continued cm page 8) 




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The Ether Vibrates 

(Continued from page 6) 

LANDS OF THE EARTHQUAKE is Kutt- 
ner at his very best — with scientific trickery 
and brilliantly ingenious fantasy blended so 
adroitly that devotees of both schools of im- 
aginative fiction will be happily trapped. 
LANDS OF THE EARTHQUAKE is, we feel 
certain, due to take its place in file little 
gallery of classics to which so few additions 
are ever made. 

It is, in effect, the story of William Boyce, 
New York citizen of today who finds himself 
in front of the Public Library with exactly 
one year missing from his memory. And, 
seeking the year he has lost and a something 
else that is very dear to him and just eludes 
the frantic fingers of his brain, he is led to the 
cellar of a house by the Egst River, an 
old house which is oddly familiar, where the 
strange stone that he finds in his pocket opens 
a gateway into a land of sorcery. 

By his very arrival in this strange country 
of inverted time — where cities drift eternally 
over cloudlike seas and time itself remains 
curiously static — he sets immutable forces in 
motion, forces which involve him and the 
object of his search, and the peoples of two 
ancient cities, in deadly conflict. 

To tell more now would be to dull the 
surprises in store for readers of LANDS OF 
THE EARTHQUAKE, but rest assured that 
they are many and truly surprising. LANDS 
OF THE EARTHQUAKE is the sort of novel 
on which the editors of STARTLING 
STORIES have set their sights from the very 
first issue and which they rejoice in dis- 
covering and printing. 

For the Hall of Fame Classic we offer a 
fondly-remembered novelet by Manly Wade 
Wellman, THE DISC-MEN OF JUPITER, 
one of the outstanding early efforts of this 
ace among STF authors. As the story is a 
(Continued on page 10) 








3 



Three months after taking your course 

I STARTED TO PIAY FOR DANCES 




“Before I took it I didn’t 
know a note of music” 



says Miss Rosie Montemurro of Vancouver, B. C„ Canada 



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Miss Rosie Montemurro H - m 

You too, can learn your favorite instrument quickly, this money-saving way 

m HF letter abo ve is typical of the of Music "Print and Picture” method If you want to play, mat! the coujwn 
T»“h«eiv^ from, the of j^uctim, ta « succeed. ~ ™ EE P “* 



-••many we have received » ■» y e m play bv ^ayi^ . . ' and and Picture” 

more than 850,000 people who have . have i oa d s of fun doing it. No Sample and II- 
taken our courses . . . expressing ap- jo ng _ w i n ded, difficult explanations . . . lustrated Book- 
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Yes, literally thousands of people, learn to play real tunes by actual notes you w«h ^ to 



xes, literally iuuu»uu* — * *’ ~ . — , 

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other before, are now playing their 
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favorite instruments . . . thanks to instruct i ons tell you how to do some- 
this amazingly simple way to learn thing. Then a picture shows you how 
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Here's why the famous U. S. School go wrong! 

See how easy it is! 

“My country 'Ms of thee, sweet land of liberty" 



CCD BCD KEF K D C 

\ ' I 



learn to play real tunes by actual notes you wish to 
from the very beginning. play. But don t 

And it’s ail so dear ... so easy to wait . . . act 
understand. First the simple printed today. U. S. 
instructions tell you how to do some- School of Mu- 
shing, Then a picture shows you how sic, 2943 
to do it. Then you do it yourself and Brunswick 
hem how it sounds. You just can’t Bldg., New 
CO wrong! York 10, N. Y. 



NOTICE 

Please don't contuse 
our method with any 
systems claiming to 
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teach you easily and 
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The Ether Vibrates 

(Continued from, page 8) 

sequel to WHEN PLANETS CLASHED, the 
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want to follow its developments. 

Also present will be a group of short stories 
culled from the best the field has to offer and, 
of course, one Sergeant Saturn, present as 
doyen of the MEET THE AUTHOR, FAN- 
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best issues of SS ever to hit the stands! 




I N PURSUANCE of a policy already in ef- 
fect in THRILLING WONDER STORIES, 
our companion magazine, the Sarge is here- 
after going to run more and briefer letters. 
So if you find your brain-child shorn of 
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its shearing was to permit someone else’s 
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by G. J. Phillips 

Dear Sir: Concerning the reform of your Reader’s 
Columns — THANK GOD!!! — Ste. S Yaeger Bid., Bran - 
don, Manitoba, Canada. 



Why not thank us too — huh? 

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by George M. Lee 

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outbreak of war in 1939, so you can imagine my 
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I really enjoyed everything In it, including ads, 
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start getting choosy in about twenty years. — I Buxton 
Avenue, Carlton, Nottingham, England. 



Here’s hoping you get a good response to 
your plea, George. It’s nice to know that 
(Continued on page 94) 



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Steve brought up the foil just as the man emitted a bellow and charged, running straight into the point (CHAPTER I) 

THE LAWS OF CHANCE 

By HURRAY LEINSTER 

Survivors in a bomb-blasted land , Sieve Sims and "Lucky" 
Connors alone possess the miracle mineral that can lead 
America to victory in the strangest, deadliest of wars! 



CHAPTER I 
Amid Debris 

S TEVE SIMS, former Professor of 
Physics at Thomas University, deli- 
cately pushed aside a brushy tree- 
branch and looked down to where the little 
town had been. It wasn’t there any longer. 
But there wasn’t a single monstrous atomic- 



bomb crater, as he might have expected. 
Half a dozen relatively small craters — no 
more than two to three hundred feet across — 
had obliterated a third of the town entirely 
and flattened all the rest. Then there’d 
been a fire. There was nothing left. 

He regarded it without shock, but with a 
grim regret. This had been his home town. 
He’d spent a long time making his way to 
it from the vicinity of Thomas University, 









H STARTLING STORIES 



after there was no longer any hope there. 
He’d waited nearly four months, in the 
rapidly -appearing waste-land on the edge of 
the campus, hoping against hope for some- 
one like himself to turn up able to help him 
on the work he still believed might partly 
repair the world catastrophe. 

After there was no more chance there, it 
had taken him three months to get here — 
four hundred miles. There’d been inter- 
ludes, of course. Once he stopped and joined 
a group who called themselves guerillas. Be- 
fore he left them he’d killed a man in cold 
blood, an act he still remembered with satis- 
faction. 

Then he’d had to hide from his late com- 
panions, and then he’d stayed on at a tiny 
community where the people were unin- 
formed but resolute — too resolute entirely — 
and now he’d reached his home town and it 
was waste. 

“Let’s go out and cut our throats,” said 
young ex-professor Sims to no one in par- 
ticular. 

It was a quotation, and he grimaced 
wryly to himself. He squatted down to watch 
the area of blackened debris which had 
been the scene of his childhood. 

Since the bombs began to fall, like every- 
body else he’d learned that it didn’t pay to 
take things for granted, or to be unduly 
brave, or to frank about yourself, or any- 
thing which had been normal and excusable 
as little as a year ago. So Steve — no longer 
professor because there weren’t any colleges 
or students left — Steve Sims squatted close 
to the trunk of a tree and attentively re- 
garded the ruins of his home town. 

It was utterly dead and completely unin- 
habitable. It must have been destroyed a 
long time ago, because green things were 
already growing between the fire-blackened 
timbers where the town was merely flattened 
and burned out. 

There was a greenish scum on the ponds at 
the bottoms of the bomb-craters, too, which 
proved that this was a high-explosive job, 
not atomic. And that proved that They — the 
people with bombs and planes — hadn’t an 
unlimited supply of the atomic bombs whieh 
melted the surface of the ground to a sort of 
crackled, glassy substance which was highly 
radioactive. 

Nothing like that was visible here. So if 
they used ordinary high explosives to flatten 
a small town, their stock of atomics was 
limited. 



T HAT was good. Steve recognized it as 
good, and then he wondered why he 
thought it was good. Whoever They were — 
and all of civilization had been smashed, and 
nobody knew who had started it — They 
couldn’t be touched by people like Steve. 
The atomic war had degenerated into an 
indiscriminate, hysterical mass slaughter of 
everybody by everybody else. 

Steve was a wanderer, like most of the 
people left alive. He was homeless, and his 
only possessions were a very small lady’s 
automatic pistol, with only two clips ot 
cartridges, a pair of fencing foils with the 
buttons broken off and the blades filed to 
needle-sharp points, one blanket — plasti- 
coated on one side so it was water-proof- 
six child’s copy-books nearly filled with 
writing, and one-half of a roasted chicken. 
He’d stolen the chicken two days before. 

“The obvious thing,” he repeated pres- 
ently, “is to go out and cut my throat 
But—” 

“Oh-oh!” he said then. 

There was a movement in the debris. An 
infinitely cautious movement. For an instant 
he couldn’t make it out, and then he saw a 
small figure crawl out from under an in- 
describable mess that looked like a heap of 
oversized black jackstraws. The figure 
looked about in a hunted manner, seemed to 
listen fearfully, and then came scrambling 
over the wreckage in Steve’s general direc- 
tion. It moved with frenzied haste. 

Steve watched, immobile. When some- 
body ran away, there was usually some- 
body else after them. It was not the business 
of a mere Wanderer to interfere. Especially, 
perhaps, not the business of a former pro- 
fessor of physics with six child’s copybooks 
full of a partly written treatise on “The 
Paradox of Indeterminacy.” But the dis- 
covery of his home town in ruins had pretty 
well removed that last reason for non- 
interference. 

Still, he watched without any movement. ^ 
The small figure scrambled over a tumbled 
heap of bricks. Something loose rolled down^ 
and other shattered stuff followed. There 
was a miniature landslide and a cloud of 
white dust arose. 

“That’s bad!” said Steve. 

The figure raced cm. It was very small and 
pantingly in haste. It seemed filled with 
desperation. But it was the only moving 
thing in sight except a lazily soaring buz- 
zard, flying in tranquil circles in the sky. 




16 STARTLING STORIES 



Except for the buzzard it was the only 
moving tiding in sight. Then another figure 
stirred. This one appeared in the shoulder- 
high weeds which grew everywhere over 
■what had been cleared land around the edge 
of town. The second was a larger figure. 
It moved swiftly to cut off the smaller 
one. 

Steve watched. It was none of his busi- 
ness. The world was in ruins. There was no 
law. There was no government. There was 
no hope. So he could see no reason for him 
to risk his life interfering between two un- 
known persons, one fleeing and one pur- 
suing. But on the other hand there was no 
longer any special reason to be careful of his 
life. 

The smaller figure gained. It came to 
what had been a street, where the blast of 
the nearest bomb had blown straight along 
its length. Trees had fallen, but there was 
little wreckage. For two hundred yards the 
running small figure fled without hindrance, 
unseen by its pursuer and not seeing him. 
Then it stumbled and fell headlong, and 
scrambled to its feet and fled again. But 
now long hair tumbled about its shoulders 
and streamed behind. 

“The devil?” said Steve Sims, in dis- 
gust. 

He rose smoothly to his feet, slid the pack 
from his back, and pulled out one of the 
fencing-foils. He ran lightly through the 
trees, vexed, arguing with himself that this 
sort of thing happened too often for him to 
be responsible, that he might have to use 
a highly precious cartridge, that he might 
get killed, and generally assuring himself 
that he was a fool. 

It was almost a quarter -mile before he 
really saw either of the two figures again. 
Then he reached a spot where he could look 
through the trees again upon the town. Much 
had happened. The girl had discovered her 
pursuer. He was almost upon her. Some- 
where and somehow she had snatched up a 
splintered bit of wood. 

As Steve reached the woods’ edge the man 
snarled and plunged to seize her. She 
flailed the stick around in a typically femi- 
nine desperate sweep, without accuracy and 
without real force. He flung up his arm and 
the stick broke against it But then he 
roared and plucked blindly at his eyes while 
she gasped and darted for the wood, her wild 
tresses fluttering behind like yacht pennants 
billowing in the winds of a happier day. 



B ELLOWING, the man raced after her, 
He ! d been dust-blinded only for a 
moment. She was barely ten yards before 
him when she dived between tire first trees. 
There was utter horror upon her face when 
Steve appeared before her. But he jerked 
his thumb to one side. 

“That way,” he said sharply. 

She swerved and fled like a desperate 
deer. Steve stepped into the fine she’d 
swerved from. The pursuer, raging, plunged 
into the woods. 

He saw Steve and roared again. He,j 
charged. 

And Steve brought up the needle-sharp 
foil and he ran right upon it, up to the very 
hilt, so that there was a sickening impact 
against the hard guard. Steve simply stepped 
aside and let him crash to the ground. He 
did not move after he had fallen. 

Some five minutes later, Steve cleaned the 
foil painstakingly. There had been tobacco 
in the dead man’s pockets, and he’d had 
a rusty knife, and a flask of poisonously 
vile liquor. Also there were four diamond 
rings and a child’s necklace. Somehow the 
child’s necklace removed any distaste Steve 
might otherwise have felt for what he had 
done. 

He straightened up and tossed aside the 
leaves on which he’d cleaned the foil. Then 
there was a faint stirring. The girl's voice 
came shakily, although she remained in- 
visible. 

“Th-thanks,” she said. 

“Don’t mention it,” said Steve. He paused, 
and added, “I split my loot. You may need 
ibis.” 

He tossed the knife f rom the dead man’s 
pockets in he* -oral direction. Leaves 
stirred. She came into view. She picked up 
the knife. She was smudged all over with 
the charcoal of the timbers in which she had 
hidden, but she was pretty. He regarded her 
detachedly. She wiped off her face with the 
sleeve of the man’s coat she wore. 

“Also, you might like these,” said Steve. 
“He had them. I’m not a professional assassin 
and I don’t like to take jewelry. Can you 
use them?” 

He held out the rings and necklace. She 
searched his face with a hunted expression 
on her own. 

“I’ll put them down and walk away,” he 
said drily. “Seriously, you might be able 
to use them for barter. People want odd 
things, these days.” 




17 



THE LAWS OF CHANCE 



She took a deep breath and moved for- 
ward. 

"N-no,” she said, breathing fast. “I’m — 
not afraid of you. You — you did that.” 
She looked down at the dead man and 
swallowed. “He was horrible! Have you any- 
body else with you?” 

“I’m a lone wolf,” Sims said. “No, I take 
part of that back. I’m not a wolf. Just alone. 
How about you? Friends? Is there some 
place you can go and be safe? I’ll try to 
take you there if you like.” 

She swallowed again, and then shook her 
head. She looked at him appealingly. He 
weighed the situation. In the last seven 
months the ordinary, everyday world had 
crashed into small and mangled fragments. 

For a man to stay alive alone was difficult 
enough. Also, there were the implications 
of that work on the “Paradox of Indeter- 
minacy,” which was either sheer nonsense 
or very much more important than the life 
or safety of any one girl, even though she 
looked as frightened or as desperately ap- 
pealing as this one. 

“I’ve got half a chicken, very badly 
roasted, about a quarter of a mile away,” 
Steve said without warmth. “I can offer you 
part of it. In my wandering around I’ve 
found one or two communities that are 
hanging together after a fashion. I’ll help 
you try to find one that will let you join 
them if you want me to. I’m afraid that’s 
about all I can do, though.” 

She gasped: 

“P-please!” 

He did not like to see such gratitude for 
so problematic a benefit. He turned and 
walked away. After half a dozen paces he 
looked back, and she was following. She 
wiped her eyes with the sleeve of that man’s 
absurd coat. He went on, scowling. No- 
body knew who’d started the atomic war of 
which this girl, and he, and the dead man 
left casually back in the woods werd* all 
casualties, in common with most of the 
human race. 

Nobody knew whether it was ended or not. 
There was civilization of a sort maintain- 
ing itself somewhere; that was certain. But 
what was really positive was that there was 
no hope for anything but a wandering, wild 
animal life for the few who survived and 
'were not members of the small and em- 
battled communities of farmers who fought 
ferociously to keep their own membership 
alive. Steve himself had not an ounce of 



fat left on him. The girl looked hungry. 

He reached his pack and slipped it over 
his shoulders, and then let it slip down again. 
He took out the half-chicken and handed 
it to her. Her lips moved hungrily. 

“You said this was all,” she said. 

“Half a chicken for you, and half for me.” 
he said untruthfully. “Go on and eat it!” 

With a sharp little intake of breath, she 
did. She was starving, but even so she did 
not gobble. In the months since the bombs 
began to fall, he’d seen a great many human 
beings deteriorate to the level of animals. 
She hadn’t. He watched until she had de- 
voured the last morsel of the half-chicken. 
She was still human. She smiled at him 
apologetically. 

“I was greedy,” she said ruefully, “but it 
was so good! What now?” 

He debated. No supper for him. No shel- 
ter. A girl to look after, and the paradox 
of indeterminacy a completely hopeless 
< fort since his home town was smashed and 
te only man who could have offered a 
resh viewpoint, which he needed badly, 
vas doubtlessly dead in its ruins. 

“What’s your name?” he asked mildly. 

“Frances.” She looked at him expectantly. 

“Listen, Frances,” he said detachedly. 
“What say we go out and cut our throats?” 



CHAPTER II 
Fugitive 



A FTER it grew dark they talked quietly. 

Steve made a camp of sorts, a mile 
and a half from the place where he’d first 
seen Frances. Its basis was the trunk of a 
monster seed-tree that had crashed to earth 
in a thicket of its second-growth descend- 
ants. It meant a supply of rotted, punky 
wood which would make a flameless, smoke- 
less fire, and the trunk was raised above 
the ground for part of its length so the fire 
could be built under it and be invisible from 
the sky. 

On the way to that place the girl had 
spotted blackberry bushes and gathered a 
comforting supply. And after Steve had 
walled in one side of the tree-trunk with 
leafy branches, and drawn down his blanket 
over the other, they ate the blackberries, 
stumbled through the new-fallen darkness 




18 STARTLING STORIES 



to a nearby brook and drank, and returned 
to the encampment. 

“You can choose your half of the shelter, 
and fix your bunk of leaves,” said Steve. 
“I’ll take the other half and we’ll have the 
fire between us instead of a sword. And a 
few leaves on the coals from time to time will 
keep insects away.” 

“You didn’t tell the truth about the 
chicken,” the girl said suddenly. “You let 
me eat it all!” 

“I’m full of berries anyhow,” Steve as- 
sured her. “If you want to go to sleep, go 
ahead. I’m going to write a little.” 

They were in the cramped and improbable 
shelter. Frances blinked at him in the absurd 
dim glow that came from the coals. 

“Write?” 

“A master-work,” said Steve in conscious 
irony. “A treatise on the Paradox of In- 
determinacy. It is possibly a triumph of 
logic and theoretic physics, but it is certain- 
ly the most futile thing that anybody ever 
worked his head off at.” 

He grinned mirthlessly at her across the 
glow from the smoldering rotted wood. 

“In the old days alchemists were frequent- 
ly thwarted by the fact that their chemicals 
wouldn’t do what they wanted them to. So 
they talked of affinities and caloric and 
phlogistin and various other things that 
didn’t exist. They were excuses. We mod- 
ern physicists have been thwarted by the 
fact that our experiments didn’t work as we 
wanted them to, either. 

“When you get down to a few thousand 
atoms or electrons or whatnot, your experi- 
ments begin to, go haywire. You can pre- 
dict how a billion atoms or electrons will 
behave, but you can’t know what a hundred 
will do. 

“So we began to talk about indeterminacy. 
When you’re working with such small num- 
bers of objects that the laws of chance come 
into play, your results are governed by the 
laws of chance rather than the ordinary 
laws of physics. The result is indeterminacy. 
That’s an excuse, too.” 

She listened to all this gravely. There was 
still a smudge on her cheek from the char- 
coal of the ruined town. She’d washed at 
the brook, but that hadn’t come off. Steve 
went on with ironic detail: 

“So I began to question the laws of chance. 
All the other physical laws we know ex- 
plain how forces act. We can identify the 
forces — electric charges and the like. Maybe 



the laws of chance explain how forces act, 
too, but we’ve never identified any forces 
to fill the bill. I’ve worked up some clues. 
I’ve imagined and described some forces that 
would operate to make heads come up a 
thousand times in succession, if applied that 
way. 

“But I haven’t the least idea how they 
could be generated or detected, unless you 
consider that Rhine detected them in his 
psychokinetic experiments. I’m in the posi- 
tion of a man who had imagined electricity 
on theoretic grounds, but had never heard 
of it and didn’t know how to generate «>r 
detect it. He just knew there must be such 
a thing and that if he could get hold of it 
he could go to town.” 

Then Steve shrugged. 

“Mmmmmm, you could win at any card- 
game,” the girl said. “You could make any- 
thing happen that was even faintly possible. 
Is that it?” 

Steve jumped. He had talked with deliber- 
ate ironic intent, because the last man on 
earth he’d hoped, and that only faintly, 
could understand his reasoning and help him 
carry it farther was undoubtedly dead in 
the wreckage of the town two miles away. 

The man in question had been a putterer 
and a visionary who was more or less re- 
sponsible for the fact that Steve had been a 
professor of physics. The loss of the last 
hope of another mind to work with him had 
been a blow. But this girl hadn’t listened 
blankly! She’d understood! 

“My father’d have liked that idea,” she 
added, after a moment. “He’d have loved it! 
He was killed when the town was bombed.” 
She nodded calmly. “I was away then. I 
came back on foot because the gasoline had 
already given out. The town was gone when 
I got here.” 

S TEVE blinked. Then, tentatively, he 
said a name. The girl stared at him. 
“That was my father! You — ” 

“I’m Steve Sims,” said Steve wryly. “May- 
be you’ve heard of me. I know you now! 
You were twelve years old when I went off to 
college. How do you do?” 

They looked at each other across the 
double-cupful of embers on which Steve put 
leaves, for smoke, every now and then. 
Then the girl’s drawn look relaxed. 

“This is — nice!” she said unsteadily. “Of 
course! You used to write to my father 
sometimes! It’s like — it’s like finding one’s 




THE LAWS OF CHANCE 



II 



family again!” 

She blinked to keep back tears, and im- 
pulsively reached over to grasp his two hands 
in hers. 

“It doesn’t take much to make some peo- 
ple happy,” he said gruffly. “How’d you 
manage to live this long?” 

She told him, in the shelter which smelled 
of leaf-mold and smoke and dampness. The 
town was wreckage when she returned to 
it. She’d had an ancient aunt living in a 
now-shattered cottage on the edge of town. 
The old lady had quite incredibly survived 
the bombing, and indomitably had taken 
possession of a sawmill-shed beyond the 
town’s limits. Frances had found her. 

The two women — the one so old and feeble 
and therefore helpless in adversity, and the 
other so young and therefore in deadly 
danger as civilization ceased to be-— the two 
women kept themselves alive. They gath- 
ered crops from fields whose owners had 
been killed by the strafing planes which 
followed the bombers. They stored food and 
lost it to plundering Wanderers from whom 
they hid. 

The aunt had died two weeks back. 
Frances found her shot dead. There was no 
explanation and no cause for it. She was 
simply shot. Frances knew of no person or 
any community she dared attempt to join. 
Three days since, a group of Wanderers — 
the restless displaced persons who roved 
everywhere like locusts, these days — had 
come upon her. 

There were women in the band. At first 
Frances had hoped for safety with them, but 
one single day taught her better. Before 
nightfall she slipped away and hid. The 
women were glad of her going, but some of 
the men hunted her. One had been close at 
her heels when she hid in the wreckage of 
the town. Steve had seen the rest. He’d 
killed that man. 

“And then I suggested that we go out and 
cut our throats,” said Steve. “Which still 
seems as good an idea as any.” 

He put leaves on the fire. Smoke filled the 
shelter, to drive away mosquitos. But 
Frances smiled at him. 

“I want to give you something back,” she 
said quietly. “I don’t need it now. Here!” 

He was fumbling in his pocket, but he 

The farmer stayed close to 
Steve as he searched the ruins, 
holding the knife ready in his 
hand, while Frances watched 
breathlessly (CHAPTER X) 





2® STARTLING STORIES 



looked. She offered him the rusty knife he’d 
taken from the dead man’s pocket. 

"I don’t need it any more,” she repeated. 
She smiled, but there were tears in her 
eyes. 

Steve grunted. He took the knife, but he 
put something else in her hand. It was the 
small automatic and the bullets which had 
been his greatest treasure. 

“It’s not enough,” he growled. “Not if 
there are Wanderers around, and they’re that 
kind of Wanderers. You keep this handy, but 
for Heaven’s sake don’t waste the bullets! 
There simply aren’t any more!” Then he 
added firmly: “It’s better for you to have it, 
because in case of trouble we’re both in, 
they’ll be watching me for surprises like 
that, and you’ll have a better chance to 
make good use of it.” 

She hesitated, and he reached over and 
dropped it in her coat pocket. 

“Now go to sleep!” he commanded. “I 
want to get to work!” 

She obeyed him to the extent of curling 
up on the bed of leaves. But her eyes stayed 
open, watching him. He scowled at the tiny 
bed of coals. This was bad! Existence had 
been precarious enough with only himself 
to think of. 

It would have been worse with a girl to 
whom he felt no obligation, and whom he 
might be able to place with some grimly 
defensive group of farmers’ families banded 
together against those who called themselves 
guerillas, and those who simply looted with- 
out excuse. But a girl he knew, whose 
father had started him off by interesting 
him in physics . . . 

A FTER a long, long time, during which 
he did not even open a copy-book to 
write to it, she spoke softly. 

“I’ve thought of something, Steve,” she 
said. “In that bunch of Wanderers there 
was one man who didn’t seem to be really 
bad. I think he’d have protected me. But 
the others frightened me so. . . .” 

Steve grunted. He’d take her away from 
this locality tomorrow. Somewhere. There 
had to be some plan he could make, but 
there was nothing to plan with and nothing 
to plan for. Civilization was smashed. 

The world was headed for barbarism -un- 
less some nation, somewhere, had improb- 
ably succeeded in keeping itself intact while 
the rest of the world went headlong toward 
destruction. And if one nation retained its 



civilization, the odds were that it would 
eventually enslave the survivors of all the 
rest. No, there was nothing to plan for. 

“But mostly I mention him,” said Frances, 
her eyes very large in the nearly complete 
darkness, “because maybe he could help you. 
He says his name is Lucky Connors. He 
says his luck is fool-proof. He says he’s 
never missed a meal since the bombs fell, 
and he’s never had a bad break, and — well — 
the other wanderers wouldn’t play cards or 
anything with him, because he always wins. 
He is phenomenally lucky, Steve! If you 
could find out what makes him that way — ” 

“There’s what you call a series,” said 
Steve ungraciously. “It’s a sequence of un- 
likely happenings. It may be of any length, 
even infinite. He may be in such a series. 
Those things gave me file clue I had.” 

The girl was silent, her eyelids drooped. 
Presently — half-asleep — she woke with a 
start and looked about her in terror. Then 
she looked pleadingly at Steve. 

“I — started to dream you’d gone away and 
left me,” she told him apologetically. “Would 
you — mind holding my hand until I’m asleep? 
It’s been — pretty terrible, Steve.” 

He reached over and took her hand in 
his. It was small and it had been very soft. 
There were work-worn places on it now. He 
held it gently fast. She relaxed. She dozed 
off, and opened her eyes again and saw him 
still close by, and smiled sleepily and drew 
a deep breath. Then she suddenly went off 
into the slumber of complete security and 
weariness. 

Steve swore under his breath. He sat very 
still so she could rest. 

Half an hour later he heard sounds which 
did not belong in the night. Thrashing 
noises. They stopped, and began again. 
Something was moving about in the dark- 
ness. It was close by. It was coming closer. 

Steve wriggled out from the shelter he’d 
contrived. He crouched down in the shadow 
of the giant tree he’d utilized as a ridge- 
pole. He had one of the sharp-pointed foils 
ready in his hand. He listened with all his 
ears. 

Something drew closer still. Presently he 
could see it as a moving bulk amid the lesser 
shapes of tree-trunks. It was human. It 
stopped, and sniffed, and he knew how the 
shelter had been found. By the smell of the 
leaf-smoke he’d made to drive away insects. 

The figure moved forward again. Steve 
tensed. There could be no friendly human 




THE LAWS 

being, and he had the girl to protect The 
figure shifted something it carried, and 
Steve saw starlight, filtered through the 
trees, glint upon polished metal. The other 
man stopped, and stared specifically at the 
shelter, and moved cautiously toward it. The 
gun-barrel moved to a readier angle, 

Steve lunged, quickly and expertly and 
silently. The needlepoint of his foil slid 
smoothly forward. 

It stopped. With the impetus of the lunge 
behind it, the slender foil bent double and 
the figure whirled with a grunt of pain, and 
then there was a lurid coruscation of light 
and the feel of a terrific blow. 

Steve knew vaguely that he was falling, 
before he ceased to know anything at all. 



CHAPTER III 
“Lucky” Connors 



F ROM a vast distance he heard a voice 
speaking in reassuring tones. 

“Hey, quit cryin’, Frances,” it said. “He’s 
gonna be all right! I ain’t had a bad break 
yet.” 

Then Steve became aware of his body's 
existence. He was lying on his hack, with a 
bit of fallen branch sticking into his flesh. 
Then he knew that his head ached. Horribly. 
He opened his eyes and saw leafy branches 
and twinkling stars between them. 

“My luck’s holdin’,” repeated the confi- 
dent voice. “Didn’t that sticker of his bend it- 
self all up on my rib? What’s the odds 
against that, Frances?” 

Steve heard the girl crying quietly. 
“After all, I woulda shot him,” the man’s 
voice went on persuasively. “But instead, 
when I swung around my gun-barrel 
slammed him on the head. So that makes it 
right! He’ll have a headache. And I got a 
bole in my skin that stings like blazes. All 
even! I’ve been pullin’ for somebody to ex- 
plain my luck to me and kinda show me how 
to use it. I got a hunch he’s the guy who 
can do it!” 

Steve’s brain went round and round in his 
skull. All this did not make sense. But 
nothing made sense. Then, abruptly, it 
fitted together into something like lunacy. 

It must be “Lucky” Connors! The man 
with the wandering band from which 
Frances had hid, but who would have pro- 



OF CHANCE 21 

tected her. The one who always won. Whom 
Frances had mentioned because if Steve 
could find out why he was so persistently 
fortunate, he might use it to solve the para- 
dox of the indeterminate. 

“I guess you’re right,” said Steve pain- 
fully. “About the headache, anyhow.” 

He stirred. Frances made a gasping ex- 
clamation and bent over him eagerly. Even 
in the dim starlight he saw the expression of 
unbelieving joy upon her face. 

“Of course, though, I may simply be 
crazy,” he said dizzily. “Tell you in & min- 
ute or two.” 

He managed to sit up. The man he had 
tried so painstakingly to kill — silently and 
without warning, as it was necessary to kill, 
these days — regarded him without animus. 

“Me, I’m Lucky Connors,” said the stran- 
ger amiably. “That sticker of yours was sharp 
enough, I figure, and it musta been at just 
the right angle, to stick a little way into my 
rib and bend, instead of slidin’ off and goin’ 
on through me. Lucky, huh?” 

“Lucky,” conceded Steve. This was com- 
pletely insane. The man he had tried to 
kill, and justly enough, in the current state 
of things, was completely devoid of either 
anger or of triumph. In fact, he had leaned 
a perfectly good rifle against the fallen 
tree which was the shelter, and seemed to 
be taking no care of his life at all. 

“It’s like this,” said the other man eagerly. 
“I got luck. Whatever I pull for, seems to 
happen. When Frances ducked away from 
the gang I was with, I pulled for luck to go 
with her. She’s a good kid. And I’ve been 
pullin’ for somebody to help me figure out 
what I can do with this luck I got. I don’t 
understand it but I figure it’s something that 
could do a lotta good if it was handled right. 
You get me?’’ 

“It’s a series,” said Steve. He put his hands 
to his head. “Gosh, this is crazy! Didn’t we 
try to kill each other just now?” 

“Uh-huh,” said Connors placidly. “But 
we didn’t. That’s my kinda luck. D’you 
know anything about that stuff?” 

“Yes!” said Frances eagerly. “He knows 
just what you want to find out, Lucky! 
And you — I told him not long ago that you 
could help him! It’s the paradox of indeter- 
minacy! It’s — ” 

Steve held his head in his hands while it 
throbbed. He honestly doubted his own 
sanity. By all the laws of probability either 
he or this intruder should have been very 




22 STARTLING STORIES 



dead, by now, and failing that by all the 
rules of human conduct, they should be at 
each other’s throats. But, quite impossibly, 
they were both alive, through a sequence 
of improbabilities that couldn’t happen once 
in a million years. 

Frances talked quickly. He heard his own 
explanation of indeterminacy rephrased 
much more simply than he had put it. And 
then Frances went on to explain urgently 
that Steve had figured out some forces that 
would cause luck to be what one wanted it 
to be, only he didn’t yet know how to gen- 
erate those forces or to detect them. 

I T WAS stark lunacy, there in a second- 
growth thicket by the site of a bombed- 
out town, with no law and no civilization 
and no hope for anything in the future, 
within a few minutes of a mutually at- 
tempted assassination. 

An abstract discussion of probability 
at such a time and place was simply not one 
of the things that happen! And Steve’s 
head throbbed horribly and he was some- 
how ashamed of his failure to defend 
Frances, even though she couldn’t have 
needed defense or it would have been far 
too late by now. 

“I got it!” said Lucky Connors’ voice con- 
tentedly in the darkness. “He’s the guy I’ve 
been lookin’ for, all right! Listen, fella! 
We’ll talk in the mornin’. You gotta head- 
ache. So you go get some shut-eye. My rib 
aches where you stuck it, and I ain’t sleepy 
anyhow. I’ll poke around an’ set some rabbit- 
snares and we’ll talk things over while we 
eat breakfast. Right?” 

Steve expostulated in one last protest for 
the normal. 

“How’ll you see to set snares? This is 
awful! I’m crazy or dead or something!” 
“It ain’t you that’s cracked,” said Lucky 
Connors comfortably. “It’s the facts. Listen! 
I got enough string for three snares. If I got 
three rabbits in the mornin’ you’ll know I’m 
right, huh?” He did not wait for an answer. 
He stood up briskly. “Okay. You go get 
some sleep. I’ll be around in case of trouble. 
But I’m pullin’ that there won’t be any.” 

He moved away, and Steve stared dizzily 
after him. Frances took his hand and urged 
him to rest. She seemed extraordinarily en- 
couraged. Which, Steve found himself think- 
ing absurdly, would be luck for Lucky Con- 
nors, for Frances to feel safer and happier 
when he was around. 



It was all impossible. Too impossible. But 
his head ached. He crawled back to the 
shelter and held his head over the heat of 
the few remaining coals. The heat stung the 
raw place where the rifle-barrel had hit, 
but somehow it soothed the headache. He 
grew sleepy. He lay down. Suddenly he 
slept. 

He woke to the sound of movement out- 
side, and instinctively reached for weapons. 
Then Frances disentangled her fingers from 
his and smiled at him. 

“That’s Lucky,” she said confidently. 

Steve went out. A bearded, stocky figure 
was cleaning the last of three rabbits. He 
nodded to Steve. 

“ ’Mornin’,” he said cordially. “I got three, 
like I said.” 

He held up the rabbits. 

They ate breakfast, a rabbit apiece, cooked 
over Steve’s revived small fire. As they ate, 
they talked — or Lucky did. 

. “Y’see, I’ been pullin’ for somebody to 
explain this business, and I’ been thinkin’,” 
he said earnestly. “What Frances said checks 
up. You claim there’s some kinda force, like 
electricity, maybe, that decides what things 
happen, like chemistry decides whether 
things will burn or not. Rock won’t burn. 
Wood will. That’s chemistry. You can’t 
throw a seven every time shootin’ crap. 
That’s kinda like what you’re talkin’ about. 
Only if you knew what kinda force makes 
seven come up sometimes, you could make 
it show every time. Right?” 

Steve nodded wearily. All this sequence 
of improbabilities seemed to him to hint at 
the verification of the theories in his treatise 
on the paradox of indeterminacy. For that 
exact reason, he suddenly felt a hopeless 
doubt of their validity. Theories like that 
shouldn’t be proved by eccentrics like Lucky 
Connors. It wasn’t the scientific method! 
One should know what one was about! 

“Okay,” said Lucky Connors. He drew a 
deep breath. “I got something that works that 
way. This is it.” 

He fumbled inside his shirt, and Steve 
noticed the bloodstain where his foil had 
punctured it and — it was still impossible — 
stuck fast on Lucky’s rib instead of killing 
him. Lucky brought out a curious lump of 
some glassy substance, covered with minute 
crackles. He handled it with what was pat- 
ently assumed carelessness. 

“A talisman, eh?” said Steve. 

“I dunno what it is,” admitted Lucky. “I 




THE LAWS OF CHANCE 



come on a place where a bomb went off, an 
atomic bomb. It was a whale of a big 
crater, a coupla miles across. And it had a 
funny kinda smell to it. You know?” 

“I know,” agreed Steve grimly. “They’re 
good places to stay away from. When they 
smell, that’s ozone, and the place is plenty 
radioactive.” 

L UCKY made a gesture, indicating his 
indifference. 

“Yeah? I didn’t know that. This was where 
there’d been a city, and right close to the 
edge of the crater there was some lumps 
in the ground under that glassy stuff the 
bombs make. It was like there’d been a 
concrete foundation to whatever’d been 
there, and it wasn’t quite smashed or melted. 

“I camped by the edge of the big hole, 
lookin’ over the place and kinda thinkin’ 
about the people that’d been in the city 
when the bombs struck. When it got dark 
there was little misty lights down in the 
bomb-crater. It looked spooky. But down 
behind those lumps that mighta been con- 
crete foundations, there was a bright spot 
that didn’t look like the rest. 

“It was a spot of kinda purplish- greenish 
light. Real bright. And I went over to it — 
it wasn’t far in the crater — and it stayed put. 
Then I dug it out. It still shines in the dark. 
I keep it covered up so’s people won’t 
notice.” 

He put the stone from the crater into 
Steve’s hand. And Steve stared at it and 
held it up to the light, and then examined 
it minutely. 

“Well?” said Steve at last. 

“It was interestin’,” said Lucky Connors. 
“I looked at it. But I was hungry. I sat 
there holdin’ this thing in my hand and I 
says to myself, ‘This is pretty, but I wish 
I had somethin’ to eat.’ An’ the thing felt 
kinda warm all of a sudden. It warmed up 
considerable. I got interested wonderin’ how 
come it turned warm like that, an’ then, 
plop! I heard somethin’ fall on the ground 
a little ways away.” 

Lucky Connors paused, and looked de- 
fiant. 

“You ain’t goin’ to believe this, but when I 
went over there, there was a big barn-owl 
flappin’ around like he was lookin’ for some- 
thin’ he’d dropped,” Connors went on. “He’d 
tried to make off with a rabbit that was 
practically full-grown, and the rabbit had 
got loose somewheres up aloft and come 



plop down on the ground. With the fall and 
the owl, he was barely kickin’ when I found 
him. It was creepy! Me wishin’ I had some- 
thin’ to eat, an’ this thing gettin’ warm in 
my hands, an’ then ‘Plop!’ that rabbit failin’ 
outa the sky. It scared me to blazes and gone. 
But the rabbit sure tasted good! So — I fig- 
ured the thing was like a lucky stone and 
I kept it and I’ had luck ever since.” 

“What you’ve got there — hm!” Steve said 
slowly. “It was a bit of yellow ore, once. 
Uranium ore, I’m guessing.” He looked up 
suddenly. “The town was Chicago, eh?” 
“Sure!” said Lucky. “How’d you know?” 
“Uranium ore doesn’t hang around every- 
where,” said Steve. “The south side of the 
ruins?” 

“There ain’t any ruins,” Lucky told him. 
“But it was on the south side of where 
there’d be ruins if there was any.” 
“University of Chicago,” said Steve. 
“Nuclear Research Laboratory. That’s it!” 
He felt Frances’ eyes intent upon him. 
Lucky Connors grinned and nodded. 

“I was pullin’ for somebody to explain it. 
What have I got?” 

“Heaven knows!” said Steve grimly. 
“When you bombard uranium with a cyclo- 
tron, you get neptunium and plutonium. 
That happens in a laboratory. But this is 
uranium that was bombarded by an atom 
bomb, something a lot more powerful than a 
cyclotron! 

“It’s not neptunium or plutonium, obvi- 
ously. It’s something else that’s probably be- 
yond either in atomic weight. It’s something 
quite new, I suspect. Something that couldn’t 
be anticipated, and I’m fairly sure it couldn’t 
be duplicated. But it’s probably dangerous.” 
He handed back the odd bit of matter. 

“I wouldn’t carry it on my body if I were 
you,” he said detachedly. “Sheathe it in 
lead, anyhow. Nobody can guess what it’s 
like or what it will do. It couldn’t be made 
in a laboratory because you can’t bombard 
anything with an atom bomb and have any- 
thing left. But it happened here. I sus- 
pect pretty strongly that it’s at least as 
active as radium, though probably in some 
different way. Better not carry it. A radio- 
burn is bad business!” 

“Not carry it?” Lucky Connors regarded 
the object, and then shrugged. “I ain’t 
missed a meal or had a bad break since I 
had it. I pull for good luck for Frances and 
she gets it. I pull for a guy to explain it to 
me, and I meet you. I pull for three rabbits 




24 STARTLING STORIES 



in three snares this mornin’, and I get ’em! 
And you tell me to throw it away?” 

“They could all be coincidences,” said 
Steve doggedly. “The improbable is a part 
of probability. Things as improbable as 
these — even a sequence of them — have to 
happen sometimes.” 

“Yeah?” said Lucky. “Do they have to 
happen to me?” 

UT the girl was obviously puzzled. 
“You said something about a force 
that would make heads turn up a thousand 
times in succession if applied that way, 
Steve,” Frances said quickly. “Maybe this 
generates that force. Maybe you’d better try 
it. You’ll let him, Lucky?” 

Lucky handed the object back to Steve. 

“I pulled for it that he’s a square guy,” 
he said calmly. “If my luck holds, he’ll play 
fair and give it back.” 

Steve took the thing in his hands. He asked 
curt questions. You held it in your hand, 
said Lucky, and wished for something. Most- 
ly it worked. Sometimes— occasionally — it 
didn’t. That was when you wished for 
something that was impossible, like a glass 
of ice-cold beer. If what you wanted could 
happen by any conceivable accident, the 
thing would warm up. Sometimes it got 
fairly hot. If it warmed up, you knew that 
it had worked. 

Steve held it in his hand. He frowned. 
His expression grew sheepish, but he con- 
centrated doggedly. Then he stared sharply 
at the jagged thing in his hand. It had 
warmed perceptibly. It was hot ! He dropped 
it with a sudden exclamation. A dried leaf, 
where it had fallen, suddenly turned brown- 
er, then black, and then sent up a thin, wispy 
curl of smoke. 

“That was a tough one you gave it,” 
said Lucky. “I never knew it to get that hot 
before!” 

"If it works,” said Steve, unbelieving but 
still staring at the scorched leaf, “I’ll be 
raving crazy!” 

Apparently, however, it didn’t work. 
Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Minutes 
passed. Frances gazed all about her. She 
listened and she looked. Steve was tense 
without knowing why. He had an explana- 
tion of how a lump of uranium ore bom- 
barded by an atomic explosion might just 
possibly arrive at an insane condition in 
which it could generate the forces he’d imag- 
ined. But he didn’t believe it would. He’d 



put it to a test, and he was enormously 
wrought up about it, but he assured himself 
grimly that it was all nonsense. 

A quarter of an hour. Nothing. Then 
Steve could look at the new and quite crazy 
theory with something like regret. It was 
impossible, but it was so plausible! It wasn’t 
scientific, to be sure, in one sense, but when 
you are dealing with the laws of probability, 
ordinary reasoning doesn’t apply. All you 
can do is estimate your answers by statistics. 
One hundred per cent positive reaction 
would violate all — 

There was a noise overhead. A thin whis- 
tling sound. It grew nearer and louder and 
rose in pitch. It became a scream ; a shriek. 

Then something flashed down out of the 
sky nearby. It was not a bomb, but one in- 
stantaneous glimpse of it proved it to be 
bright metal. It hit nearby. It smashed into 
trees a quarter-mile away, created a mon- 
strous tearing noise and a stupendous crash. 
Then there was silence. 

Steve went deathly white. 

“It worked, all right,” he said through 
stiff lips. “Let’s get away from here! Fast!” 



CHAPTER IV 
The Crater-Stone 



T HINGS looked good. They looked 
amazingly good. Steve had considered 
that the most improbable of all possible 
events would be the crash-landing of a plane 
— one of those planes which groundlings 
never saw, but which now and again 
dropped death out of utterly empty sky 
wherever traces of surviving or reviving 
civilization appeared. 

Somewhere there was civilization which 
was intent upon the destruction of all rival 
civilization. But in seven months Steve 
knew of only one other plane that had ac- 
tually been seen, and the place from which 
it was sighted was now a bomb-crater. So 
in wishing, or “pulling for,” the crash-land- 
ing of a plane which was not to explode and 
whose radio was to have failed before its 
fall began, Steve had assuredly put the 
crater stone to a brutally savage test. 

Thrashing away through brush and occa- 
sional blessed pine woods where one could 
move swiftly, he knew that every stipulation 





THE LAWS 

of his wish had been met. A plane had fall- 
en. They'd seen it. It had crash-landed. 
They’d heard it. It had not exploded, be- 
cause they were still alive. Even its radio 
must have gone out before its fall, because 
there were no hovering specks above the 
scene of the crash even an hour later. 

It was in fact, three full hours before his 
searching of the sky showed something 
monstrous and mechanical settling down 
out of midair to the scene of the plane- 
wreck. Other flying things soared nearby. 
But by that time the trio was ten miles away. 

“It worked,” he told his two companions. 
“In every detail. I was a fool to pick that for 
a test, though. Too dangerous, for us. 
They’ll be checking over the wreckage now, 
to see if it was an accident, or if somebody 
on the ground managed to do something 
to cause it.” 

“They?” said Frances. “Who?” 

“I don’t know who," said Steve savagely. 
“The people with planes and bombs. Maybe 
the people who started bombs to falling. 
Maybe people who wiped out the ones who 
started it. But people who drop bombs 
now!” 

The large mechanical thing had landed 
among the trees in which the plane had 
crashed. 

“They’ll pick up the wreck,” he went on 
grimly. “If they’re sure it was just an acci- 
dent, they’ll blast the place it occupied so 
there’ll be nothing to encourage us ground- 
lings with the idea that their planes can 
have accidents. If they think we used some 
weapon, they’ll strafe this whole area. But 
I think they’ll call it an accident. In a sense, 
it was. A coincidence. An improbable hap- 
pening. Something like heads coming up a 
thousand times in succession.” 

They were on the slope of a small hill ten 



OF CHANCE 25 

miles distant from their late stopping-place. 
The planes soaring above the wreck began 
to move in wider circles. 

“Into the woods — quick!” snapped Steve. 

They dived into undergrowth under trees. 
They toiled on where leaves were so thick 
that the sky overhead was blotted out. 

Half an hour later they heard a drum-fire 
of explosions — of boomings which sounded 
like the deepest possible bass thunder. And 
Steve drew a breath of relief. 

“They called it an accident and blew up 
the woods where it happened. They proba- 
bly looked for tracks leading to it and didn’t 
find any. That’s luck, all right! But I wasn’t 
too bright, bringing down a plane. We could 
all "have gotten killed.” 

“No,” said Lucky Connors comfortably. “I 
been pullin’ we won’t.” 

Steve stared at him. Then he said sob- 
erly: 

“Sense! I didn’t think of that! If you 
ever lend me that crater-stone again, Lucky, 
I’ll tell you what I have in mind before I 
try it. I agree that the thing works, now. 
There’s nothing else to believe, and I think 
I know how.” 

“I’m waitin’ to hear,” said Lucky. “The 
thing bothers me! It seems kinda spooky, 
like that guy had a lamp and he rubbed 
it and a spook come and asked him what 
he wanted done and then went and done 
it” 

“It’s no Aladdin’s lamp,” insisted Steve. 
“It’s perfectly rational. It’s inevitable! But 
it’s devilish hard to believe.” 

T HEY continued to move away from the 
scene of Steve’s test of the enigmatic 
object. Frances toiled valiantly to keep up 
with them. 

[Turn page ] 




TOPS FOR, WAury 

qiggz* 4*0 betT^~ 




26 STARTLING STORIES 

“Every normal happening in physics and “Steve, it only warms up if it’s going to 



chemistry,” said Steve, “is a case of things 
seeking a lower energy -level, like water 
running down-hill or two highly active 
chemicals combining to make an almost in- 
active compound. Cause and effect every- 
where must be the same — happenings taking 
place to arrive at a lower energy-level. If 
I chop through a tree, though, I don’t knock 
it down. It falls of itself. All I do is cut 
away the stuff that keeps it from falling. 
In the same way, when a ship is launched, 
one man with an axe can knock away the 
prop that holds a ten-thousand-ton ship from 
sliding overboard.” 

“You sure knocked somethin’ down outa 
the sky,” said Lucky with a grin. 

“I don’t think so,” said Steve. “I think 
I just greased the skids for it to fall. Wher- 
ever there’s a possibility of a thing happen- 
ing, there’s a force acting to make it. Back 
in Nineteen -Forty -Four or Forty-Five Pro- 
fessor Rhine at Duke University proved that 
some people shooting crap can make dice 
come seven oftener than chance would al- 
low. They just pull for it.” 

“Not thought energy, Steve!” protested 
Frances. “It isn’t enough to do anything!” 

“It built cities and civilization,” Steve 
reminded her. “And then it smashed them. 
My guess is that it’s a sort of energy which 
does not affect matter directly, but only 
other energy. It controls other energy. And 
Lucky, here, has a step-up amplifier which 
increases its power to control. The stuff he’s 
got is undoubtedly radioactive in one fash- 
ion or another. I think, though, that it’s un- 
stable in a fashion which is affected only by 
thought energy. Thought waves — call ’em 
that for lack of a better term — increase its 
activity. And it greases the skids for what 
you want to happen.” 

“Radioactive, huh?” Lucky asked as he 
grunted. “That’s why it gets hot? Like 
radium?” 

“Like an atom bomb,” said Steve grimly. 
“Luckily, it’s self-limiting. In effect, it 
amplifies your wishing, which makes what 
you want more likely. Suppose you’re shoot- 
ing crap and you pull for a seven. Your 
brain sets up a pattern which makes sevens 
come easier. But this stuff, affected by your 
thought, amplifies that pattern and pulls for 
sevens too. And it pulls harder than you 
can, and harder and harder — getting hot the 
while — until nothing but sevens can happen. 
And it’s limited — ” 



work,” Frances said mildly, panting a little 
in her effort to keep up with him. “It doesn’t 
stay warm.” 

“It warms while it’s pulling. You can’t 
pull for a seven after it’s come. You can’t 
will it to be daylight now. It is daylight. 
That thing can’t pull for a seven after the 
seven is bound to happen — after it’s sure 
to happen. After, in the space-time con- 
tinuum, it is. And apparently it can’t, pull 
for an impossibility, either. 

“Lucky can’t wish for ice-cold beer be- 
cause there simply isn’t any. That stuff is 
an amplifier which works only when it’s 
tuned to a possibility. When the possibility 
becomes a certainty, the tuning cuts off. But 
anything Lucky pulls for while he’s got it, 
is going to happen if it conceivably can.” 

“I’m pullin’ for somethin’ now,” said Lucky 
blandly. 

They had been climbing steadily for sev- 
eral minutes. They came to open space 
again. They stopped short, but looked out 
beyond the brushwood to where ground 
fell steeply away to one side. They were 
able to look far back and see a thinning, 
dark-brown dust-cloud where the flying 
things had circled. The last of those soaring 
motes seemed to aim itself at the sky. It 
went up and up and up, increasing its speed 
as it climbed. It vanished. 

“Blast ’em!” snarled Steve suddenly. 
“They smashed us! We’ll get ’em now! 
We’ll get ’em! Their own bombs made the 
stuff that’ll bring ’em down.” 

“I’m gonna look yonder,” Lucky Connor 
said comfortably. “I been pullin’ for some- 
thing.” 

Here had been a winding mountain road. 
No wheeled vehicle had passed along it in 
months, now, and what had been a highway 
was a meandering trail of weeds and grasses. 
But Lucky was wading through those weeds 
toward a curious green mound where the 
woodland started up again. There was a 
curious glassy reflection from one place 
within it. He yanked at the vines which 
covered it. 

It was a car, parked off the highway when 
its gasoline gave out. Its owner had never 
come back for it, but creeping green things 
had crawled over it and moulds infested it 
When Lucky wrenched open a door, there 
was only mildew and decay within. The 
sheet-metal body was rusted and leprous. 
The upholstery was furry with mould. 




27 



THE LAWS OF CHANCE 



L UCKY grunted with disappointment 
and went to the back. He kicked off the 
rusted trunkback lock. He fumbled inside. 

“It’s okay,” he said, beaming. “My luck 
still holds.” 

He brought out one fungus-covered ob- 
ject and then another. They were suitcases. 
But they were the plastic luggage that had 
only been on the market a scant two months 
before the atom bombs began to fall. Metal 
or leather would have perished long since. 
When Lucky kicked them open, though, 
their contents were intact. And there were 
whipcord slacks and a girl’s corduroy jacket 
which Frances seized upon with shining 
eyes, and a pair of shoes she declared would 
fit her, and other feminine oddments. She 
darted to one side to don the new finery. 
The second suitcase yielded a steamer-rug 
and shirts, a shaving-kit, and a revolver 
with a box of shells. 

“She’s dollin’ up,” said Lucky, jovially. 
“You shave, guy, and get beautiful, too.” 
“Listen!” Steve said fiercely. “I want to 
use that crater-stone of yours and bring 
technically trained men together. I want 
to make it find us books and tools and 
fuel and the chemicals we’ll need. Then we’ll 
smash these people — whoever they are — who 
have planes and bombs and use them! After- 
ward we’ll start to build up again the civili- 
zation that’s been smashed.” 

He was trembling with the fury of a man 
who has seen his whole world torn to bits 
and who at last feels that he has a chance 
to strike back. 

“Just tell me when you wanna use it,” 
said Lucky. He tapped his body where he 
kept the precious object. “It’s all yours. 
But I better keep it meanwhile. You — uh — 
you might forget to use it to pull for the 
kinda breaks we need right along. Like — 
look at Frances, huh?” 

Frances came back to them, radiant. The 
whipcord slacks and the corduroy jacket 
fitted her. She looked not only neat but 
smart. She’d combed her hair, with a comb 
from the suitcase. She’d used lipstick found 
in it. She was, for the first time since Steve 
had met her, filled with the infinitely pre- 
cious feminine consciousness that she looked 
well. 

But Steve hardly looked at her. A sub- 
stance existed which had been made by the 
utterly uncontrollable violence of an atomic 
bomb. It was so sensitive that its rate of 
radioactive decay was controlled by thought- 



waves in its vicinity. 

The long known, indirect effect of will 
upon matter was enormously increased by 
it. The paradox of indeterminacy had been 
resolved. Chance itself could be subdued 
to the purposes of men. He was filled with 
a grim exultation. He didn’t notice Frances. 

But she noticed that he didn’t notice. 
Much of the radiance left her face. They 
went on. Nothing was said of a destination, 
but they would need food, presently. The 
way to find food was to keep on the move. 
At noontime they came upon an abandoned 
farm, its buildings ashes. But there was an 
orchard. Steve and Frances gathered fruit, 
and Lucky slipped away and came back 
triumphantly with two clucking, protesting 
chickens. 

“It’s a wonder the foxes ain’t got ’em,” he 
observed. “Or maybe it’s just luck. Huh?” 

They ate. They went on. And on. And 
on. Toward sundown they saw the rusted 
tracks of a disused railroad. There were 
other signs that they were near what had 
been a city. They camped in a small struc- 
ture which had been a tool-shed for a track- 
maintenance crew. 

After darkness had fallen, Steve held out 
his hand to Lucky. He hadn’t seen Frances’ 
first enormous satisfaction fade away as he 
seemed oblivious to her changed appear- 
ance. He’d spent most of the day planning, 
in absorbed, vengeful satisfaction, the use 
to which he would put the controller of 
chance. 

“I’ll use that crater-stone now, Lucky,” 
he said. 

“Wanna tell me how?” asked Lucky. 

“Bring together trained men,” said Steve. 
“Supply them with the materials to make 
and service planes. Smash the places where 
bombs and planes are based, and then start 
to build up civilization again. Bring law 
back. Bring back order and food and safety 
for everybody.” 

UICKLY Lucky scanned Steve’s face. 
Then he shrugged. 

“Go ahead and try,” he said drily. “If it 
was luck that’d broke down civilization, 
maybe luck could build it up again. But I 
think you’re missin’ somethin’, fella. The 
bombs smashed the cities, but if folks had 
wanted to keep law and order and such, 
they coulda done it. 

“Some places they wanted to, and they 
did — for a while. But this thing, it won’t 





28 STARTLING STORIES 



change people. The way people are ain’t 
a accident, and no accident or any luck will 
make ’em somethin’ else. I tried to make the 
gang Frances seen me with act different, 
but it didn’t work. But you go ahead and 
try.” 

“I’ll manage!” said Steve. 

He took the small object and went confi- 
dently outside. In the outer dark it shone 
brightly with a greenish-purplish light. It 
seemed alive. He stood in a warm and star- 
lighted summer night. There were the innu- 
merable noises of night things in full voice; 
insects whirring and clicking, and the occa- 
sional cry of a nightbird, and somewhere 
close and very loud the croaking chorus of 
bullfrogs in a swampy place. They were 
loudest of all. 

The other sounds could only be heard 
through the frog tumult. He was absolutely 
confident that he had in his hands all the 
power that was needed to remake the 
world. He had control of chance! He could 
control the accidental and the irrelevant! 

The power of a single human will to con- 
trol other forces had been proven long be- 
fore, of course. The most careful scrutiny of 
Rhine’s results, and their duplication else- 
where, had made it certain that dice and coils 
do not fall quite at random when the human 
will intervenes, though the amount of energy 
applied as thought had always been too 
minute to be measured or even detected 
save in the statistics of its results. 

But Steve had brought down an aero- 
plane from the stratosphere with the crater- 
stone in his hand. He’d seen it grow unbear- 
ably hot from the mere waste energy of its 
action. He had the power of millions of wills 
in his hand — perhaps billions. 

He thought, in grim carefulness, of the 
things he wished to have happen that civili- 
zation might return. He had no doubt at all. 
Not even of his own wisdom. He pictured 
what he wished to occur, and knew that 
as his wish became certain to occur, the 
thing in his hand would grow warmer and 
warmer and warmer. He thought vengefully, 
and waited for the heat which would tell 
him that his thought would come to pass. 

An hour after he had begun, he stumbled 
back inside the little shed. Frances had been 
dozing wearily. She started awake and 
looked anxiously at his face. He was white 
and stricken and despairing. 

“Did you hear the bullfrogs all fall silent 
for a solid minute?” he asked in a ghastly 



facetiousness. “I made them do that! I pulled 
for the coincidence that they’d all shut up 
at once. And they did! But that’s all I could 
do! Apparently there’s not a trained man 
left alive to join us. Not a tool-shop or a 
store of fuel or a motor or explosives or 
anything else. I pulled for everything that 
would make civilization return and the thing 
stayed cold. They were all impossible. But 
it warmed up nicely when I tried to control 
the bullfrogs.” 

He swallowed, and it was almost a sob. 
Frances stared at him. Lucky Connors lis- 
tened in silence. 

“I’ll tell you what let’s do,” said Steve. 
He grinned at them, and it was more tragic 
than tears. “Apparently the way the world 
is, is the way the world is going to stay. 
Let’s go out and cut our throats!” 



CHAPTER V 
Fight for Life 



M ORNING came and Lucky was miss- 
ing. The revolver and cartridge from 
the abandoned motor-car were set out 
beside where Steve had finally fallen 
into bitter slumber. And Frances was gone, 
too. 

Steve got up. He went out of doors. Emp- 
tiness. No sign of Lucky or of Frances, ei- 
ther. He went cold all over. Then a surge 
of such terrible rage as he had never felt 
before in all his life swept over him. He 
stood shaking, quivering with a lust for the 
blood of Lucky Connors. 

There was bright sunshine all about. There 
was the now weed-grown double embank- 
ment with its twin lines of rusty railroad 
track. Day insects stridulated. There were 
green things on every hand, blandly indif- 
ferent to the destruction of all that man had 
built, and birds flitted here and there in 
complete obliviousness to mere human 
tragedy. 

Steve stood still for a long time. Then 
he spoke aloud in a reasonable, a calm, and 
a totally unconvincing voice. 

“Well, she showed sense. While he’s got 
that crater-stone, she’ll have plenty to eat, 
anyhow. She’d have married a rich man in 
the old days, because he could give her a 
car and a fine house and jewelry. Now she’s 
sure of a stolen chicken or a snared rabbit 




THE LAWS OF CHANCE 



every day. That’s riches. He even gave her 
a trousseau!” 

Then, suddenly, he cursed thickly and 
shoved the revolver and cartridges in his 
pocket. There were weeds growing on the 
railroad embankment. They were trampled 
and bent where two people had walked 
through them. Lucky Connors and Frances 
had left Steve and gone along the embank- 
ment toward what had once been a city. 
Steve followed. 

His head did not clear at all. For more 
than seven months he’d clung to an insane 
hope that the highly theoretic and essen- 
tially unlikely facts he had gathered in six 
child’s copy-books might mean the return 
of civilization. He’d hoped that they would 
lead to the discovery and the subjugation 
of a force which men have always experi- 
enced but never suspected, and that the force 
would bring back safety and hope and de- 
cency to the world. 

Now he knew that the force existed. He’d 
handled a crude but sufficient atomic gener- 
ator and control. And it was utterly useless. 
It would not bring back a dead world. It 
would bring stolen chickens, and it would 
stop bullfrogs from croaking, and with it 
he had destroyed an aeroplane of the ene- 
mies of all he’d ever believed in. But it 
would do nothing more. And now Steve, 
raging, abandoned the thought of remain- 
ing civilized. He wanted Frances. He hated 
Lucky. He would kill Lucky, and though 
she hated him and screamed, Frances would 
be his. 

He passed a place where three houses still 
stood, unpainted and long abandoned. Pres- 
ently he passed a two-acre space of mere 
black ashes, where fire had raged unchecked 
and weeds now grew luxuriantly. A heap of 
debris where houses had been pushed vio- 
lently from one side and had collapsed upon 
everything within them, and strangely had 
not caught fire. Then a building of rein- 
forced concrete, now an empty shell. 

Then he heard a muted pop! He heard a 
keening yell. He heard a second pop. It was 
a pistol— a small pistol, like the one he’d 
given Frances. At the thought of her, fury 
swept over him again. He broke into a sham- 
bling run. 

Then he heard a cracking sound which was 
no pistol, but at a guess Lucky’s rifle. A 
chorus of yells followed the explosion. And 
these were not the voices of Frances and 
Lucky, but of others. Wanderers, perhaps. 



2 & 

Human beings sunk to the level of wolves, 
like the man he’d first killed in her behalf. 

On the instant, his rage evaporated, and 
the revolver he found out and in his hand 
was no weapon with which to meet such 
folk. A pistol was wealth unimaginable, 
these days, and it carried all the risks of 
riches. A man with a pistol, having none to 
punish him for murder, was supreme among 
his fellows, until one of them managed to 
kill him for it. One man against twenty or 
thirty or forty, even though he had a pistol, 
was not only helpless but doomed. They 
would take any risk to win it. He might 
kill half a dozen. The rest would close in 
because the pistol was a prize worth any 
danger. 

Steve found himself running. In his hand 
he held one of the slender, needle-sharp 
foils drawn from his pack. He had the pistol 
ready for a last resort. 

T HEN, quite suddenly, he reached a 
place, where he could see the crater 
which occupied most of this city’s site. About 
it was tumbled wreckage in which human 
scavengers might still hope to find some 
booty and even food in rusty cans. The 
crater was two miles across and chasm-like, 
save that it sloped down — all barren, glassy 
stuff — to sheer emptiness at its center. 

And at the very edge of the crater, Frances 
stood at bay. Lucky lay flat on the ground. 
It was apparently his fall which had brought 
the triumphant howling which guided 
Steve. Stones on the ground — half-bricks 
and bits of rubble — told what had felled 
him. And Frances crouched desperately, 
her tiny pistol upraised. 

She looked clean and trim and desperate, 
and her immaculacy and the completely 
feminine look of her caused some of the 
howling. The creatures who had stoned 
Lucky to unconsciousness yelled at her. 
They were horrible things. They hid behind 
remnants of concrete and rubble which had 
been left standing in that freakish skip- 
distance of a few hundred yards beyond a 
crater’s rim before devastation replaces the 
annihilation of the crater itself. The ragged 
figures yelled and darted from one hiding- 
place to another, edging in for an irresistible 
surge upon her. 

Steve’s arrival was unheralded. His weap- 
on was silent. He ran toward her, and 
paused to make a savage attack upon a 
group of four once-human things who 




30 STARTLING STORIES 



seemed planning a simultaneous volley of 
stones. 

His foil licked out and stabbed again and 
again, like the fang of a striking snake. 

He darted forward with a bubbling scream 
following. He attacked and struck once 
more, and a shriek arose. He zig-zagged 
closer, crazy with blood-lust and fear for 
Frances. 

He had struck three times before attention 
turned from her desirable figure to his dead- 
ly one. Then a bearded thing with maniacal 
eyes leaped at him with a club. His foil 
darted in and he ran on. Stones fell about 
him. He darted and dodged, striking when 
he could, and arrived at Frances’ side as an 
uproar of animal fury filled the air. 

Frances did not look ashamed or con- 
science-stricken, but uplifted and desper- 
ately glad. She smiled at him shakily. 

“L-lucky was pulling for you to come, 
Steve,” she said. 

“How the devil did you two get into this 
mess?” Steve snarled. 

A stone crashed close to him. 

“We came to— get another crater-stone if 
we could,” Frances explained unsteadily. 
“Lucky said it wasn’t likely, but he — pulled 
for it and his stone warmed up. So we came. 
We h-had to look at night because the stone 
glows. We did find — Steve! Behind you!” 

Steve whirled. His pistol spoke. They 
were doomed now in any case. He saw bob- 
bing figures in the distance, called by the 
shots and yelling and now scrambling over 
wreckage to be in at the kill. There had 
been perhaps forty caricatures of humanity 
in sight at the beginning. 

Now twenty or thirty more were on the 
way. The city had once held half a million 
people. A hundred or more could exist on 
what remnants even an atom bomb had left. 

Lucky stirred. But he was dazed. Steve 
took his rifle. He fired three times — once at 
a nearby figure, twice at distant targets. 
The fall of the distant men filled their fel- 
lows with terror. They flopped down and 
ceased to advance. They would not encour- 
age the nearer besiegers by arriving as rein- 
forcements. 

But there were yet other creatures popping 
out of holes, like rats. Steve saw men creep- 
ing toward the bodies of the two he had 
dropped. Not, of course, to offer aid, but to 
rob them of what poor loot they might offer. 

More stones fell near the three at the 
crater’s rim. They were not heavy enough 



to kill, but a lucky blow might stun, as 
Lucky had been stunned, and Steve saw a 
stark horror at the back of Frances’ eyes. 
The girl was picturing herself at the mercy 
of these utterly brutalized scavengers in 
the wrecked remains of slums. 

“Can’t you use the crater-stone somehow, 
Steve?” she asked desperately. “Those rocks 
may hit us, and we can’t keep shooting for- 
ever.” 

“The crater-stone,” said Steve in bitter- 
ness, “will make anything happen that could 
happen by accident, but not a blamed thing 
more. It looks as if we’re finished. We may 
be able to fight our way through, if Lucky 
comes to, but they’d trail us forever. If not 
for our guns, then for you.” 

A STONE missed his head by inches. It 
slithered over the crater’s edge and 
went bouncing and skittering over the glassy 
lining toward the center a mile away. 

He fired. A man shrieked. Purely animal, 
utterly unhuman yells arose all about them. 
The sound from the half-hidden, gesticulat- 
ing creatures was not like that of any other 
animal on earth. When men become beasts, 
some dim remnant of perverted intelligence 
guides their descent into an abyss of bestial- 
ity. No mere beasts would have shouted 
such things to Frances. And there were 
some cries which made it terribly clear that 
sooner or later a rush like a starving wolf- 
pack would be made upon them, and they 
knew what their fate would be. 

Lucky stirred again. Steve fired once more. 
Every inequality in the ground sheltered 
some scarecrow. They were snarling and 
yapping and regarding the embattled hu- 
mans and their weapons with almost equally 
frenzied desire. 

“I used the crater-stone, Steve,” Frances 
spoke quietly, “It got warm. We can go 
now. W-will you try to carry Lucky?” 

Steve did not relax his grim watch over 
the howling besiegers. But he suddenly noted 
that the number of those who exposed them- 
selves to fling stones decreased. Second by 
second, almost, it seemed to lessen. In a 
minute, the number of missiles had dropped 
to half. They continued to grow fewer. The 
distant scrambling figures no longer ad- 
vanced. 

In three minutes the howling was as great 
as ever — if anything, it had increased — but 
there were no more stones at all. And Lucky 
had turned over and was trying groggily 




THE LAWS OF CHANCE 31 



to get to his feet. Steve stiM watched sav- 
agely. 

“I — used the crater-stone,” said Frances 
again. “I think we can go now. L-lucky’s 
getting up.” 

“Yeah!” said Lucky dizzily. “What a con- 
in’ I got! That ain’t my kinda luck!” 

He steadied himself by Steve . and rose 
to wabbling erectness. There was a ulu- 
lating uproar all about them. But there was 
no longer a single stone in the air. 

“What happened?” Steve asked. “What 
did you do, Frances?” 

“I used — all the crater-stones and — pulled 
for them not to throw any more stones or 
come any closer. I — wished they eouldn’t. 
And— they can’t!” 

Steve ignored Lucky’s dizzy swaying. He 
thrust the rifle back into Lucky’s hand. He 
strode forward, his foil once more in readi- 
ness. 

A few moments later he stood above a 
hollow in the ground in which three scare- 
crows writhed and wriggled. One snarled 
at him helplessly, working feverishly at his 
right hand and arm. A second lay doubled 
up kicking, clutching at his middle. A third 
wheezed and coughed and blasphemed 
stranglingly. His eyes upon Steve were ter- 
ror-filled, but his paroxym of coughing did 
not cease. 

Steve went back to the others. 

“But that ain’t my kind of luck!” Lucky 
was saying querulously. “I got conked on the 
head! It’s the first bit of tough luck I’ve had.” 

“Sling one arm around my neck, Lucky,” 
Steve said. “We’ll all get going. Frances hit 
on the trick that we didn’t know, last night. 
They won’t follow us.” 

Frances put herself on Lucky’s other side. 
Bracing him between them, they moved 
toward the railroad embankment They 
climbed it, while the noise of those who had 
besieged them rose to a new climax of inpre- 
cation and hatred. 

They moved along the knee-high weeds 
which grew even in the gravel between the 
disused rails. Lucky recovered strength, 
with movement. In half an hour they had 
passed the tool-shed in which they had 
camped the night before. 

“But that ain’t luck!” Lucky protested 
again, after a long period of painful medi- 
tation. “I got a headache! That guy knocked 
me cold with a half brick. It’s the first bad 
break I had yet!” 

Steve had been silent, too. Not because 



any trace of his former suspicions of Lucky 
and Frances remained — they had vanished, 
somehow, with the discovery of the two of 
them embattled and about to become prey 
to the man-pack. He had been putting two 
and two together in the light of a mentally 
revised chapter of his treatise on the Para- 
dox of Indeterminacy. 

“Listen,” he said drily. “I used the crater- 
stone last night. I couldn’t do a thing except 
make frogs stop croaking. Remember?” 
“Yeah,” said Lucky. “But I pulled — ” 

“My guess is that you pulled for us to find 
out how to make the crater -stones work all 
the time,” Steve told him. “You had to be 
knocked on the head for it to happen. So you 
got knocked on the head.” He grinned with 
grim amusement. “You want to be careful 
how you pull for things with your luck. 
Lucky! Especially when you’re being altru- 
istic. That conk on the head was probably 
the luckiest thing that’s happened yet. But 
if you keep on you’ll luck yourself into get- 
ting killed!” 



CHAPTER VI 
Hiding Their Trail 



O DDLY enough Frances and Lucky had 
found no less than three lumps of 
brightly shining glassy stuff in the crater. 
They were upon the line the railroad must 
have taken before it had ceased to be, to- 
gether with nine-tenths of the city. At a 
guess, a shipment of uranium ore might 
have been in the area of annihilation when 
the bomb dropped. Perhaps it had been on 
its way to one of the atom-bomb plants the 
United States kept in operation. Or perhaps 
the fragments had been in a collection of 
mineral specimens in some school or 
museum. 

The odds were incalculable against Lucky 
— having found the first one — finding more 
of the things Steve believed the result of 
the bombardment of uranium by the blast 
of an atomic bomb. But that finding had not 
been impossible, and he had pulled for it, and 
the first crater-stone had grown warm as 
he did so. 

Now the three of them had breakfast and 
lunch in one, at a spot some ten miles from 
the ruined town. A small wild piglet poked 
an inquisitive snout at them from a cane- 




32 STARTLING STORIES 



brake and Lucky shot it. There were wild 
grapes nearby. 

Lucky scooped out a hole in the ground, 
built a roaring fire of fallen branches, rolled 
the piglet in clay, and covered it in embers. 
The piglet cooked comfortably while Steve 
wrote feverishly in his copy-books. When the 
meal was ready he had organized his notions. 

“It fits into a pattern,” he said exultantly, 
his mouth full of tender roast pork. “Proba- 
bility is anything that can happen. If you 
know how many different things can happen, 
you can figure out the odds against every 
one. When you throw two dice, just so many 
combinations can turn up. They can’t make 
more than thirty-six combinations, because 
there aren’t but that many combinations pos- 
sible. 

“A seven can be made in six different 
ways, so the odds are six in thirty-six you’ll 
make it on any given roll. A two or a 
twelve can be made only one way each, so 
the odds are one in thirty-six you’ll roll 
them. But with Lucky’s crater-stone he can 
pull for a twelve, and the stone will warm 
up and he’ll get a twelve every time. Be- 
cause it supplies energy in a pattern so that 
nothing else can turn up! That is, nothing 
else will turn up by chance, because the 
crater-stone controls chance. Right?” 

“Yeah, I guess so,” said Lucky gloomily. 
“But I just got conked on the head, and 
that ain’t luck any way you look at it.” 

“Wait a while!” said Steve. “When you roll 
dice, there are thirty-six combinations pos- 
sible somewhere in the future. Your crater- 
stone picks out one and blocks all the rest. 
But suppose you pulled for your dice to 
roll a thirteen! There’s no thirteen in the 
future to be picked out. The crater-stone 
can’t pick it out, and it simply doesn’t work, 
eh?” 

Lucky grunted. “Wrong, fella! I tried 
that once and it scared me to death.” 

“One of the dice was cracked, eh?” asked 
Steve. “And when you rolled, it hit some- 
thing and split into two parts? And read 
thirteen?” 

“Y-yeah! How’d you know?” 

“That was the only way it could hap- 
pen,” Steve told him. “There was a thirteen 
in the future of that particular pair of dice. 
So you got it But on an uncracked pair you 
couldn’t.” 

“But this conk on the head?” 

“You pulled for us to find out how to make 
the crater-stone work all the time,” Steve 



reminded him. “When you did, there were 
any number of things that could happen in 
the future. Instead of thirty-six combina- 
tions, there were hundreds of thousands. But 
only one set of events would show us how 
to use the crater-stones. So that was the one 
that had to happen.” 

“I don’t get you,” answered Lucky, look- 
ing puzzled. 

“If you hadn’t been conked you’d have 
been trying to use the stone,” Steve ex- 
plained. “If I hadn’t been there, Frances 
would have been too busy defending herself 
to try. But when the one possible set of 
things happened, she used the crater-stone 
in the way that only she would have thought 
of using it, and those creatures couldn’t at- 
tack us!” 

“What happened to them, Steve?” asked 
Frances uneasily. “Did I — kill them with 
it?” 

TEVE grinned, without too much amuse- 
ment, and cut himself another bit of 
roast pig. 

“You did better than that,” he told her. 
“You found the trick we needed. Last night, 
I tried to make some detonators explode. I 
tried to make some physicists come to where 
they’d meet us. I tried to pull for tool- 
shops, and aeroplane parts, and fuel-stores, 
and the like. I knew too much about what 
I wanted. I made what were practically 
blueprints of what I intended to have hap- 
pen. 

“And those things weren’t in the future. 
They couldn’t happen by accident. But all the 
frogs would stop croaking sooner or later. 
For every one to shut up for no particular 
reason — by accident, you might say — was in 
the future. So pulling for them all to be si- 
lent at once simply meant wishing for a co- 
incidence. And it happened!” 

He took a huge bite, enjoying himself. 
Frances shook her head. He went on, his 
mouth full. 

“You wished they’d have to stop throw- 
ing stones. You wished they couldn’t attack 
us. And in the make-up of every man there’s 
a possibility of some happening that will 
incapacitate him. Maybe abdominal cramps 
or a paroxysm of coughing. A nerve-block 
that will make one arm useless for a while. 
Those things happened to different men. 

“Maybe some threw epileptic fits. Maybe 
some fainted. There may have been heart- 
attacks or sudden malarial chills — anything 




THE I2VWS 

tfeat.couM chance to happen to any man to 
Stop him from attacking was bound to hap- 
pen, by chance, because the crater-stones 
controi chance. You see?” 

L UCKY blinked at him, chewing slowly. 

Frances stared, frowning, and slowly 
her forehead cleared. 

“I — think so. If I’d wished for them all to 
drop dead, it couldn’t have happened, be- 
cause it couldn’t happen by chance. You 
might say it wasn’t on the dice.” 

'‘Exactly!" Steve nodded emphatically, 
“Lucky can’t do miracles. He can’t do the 
impossible. But he can do the improbable — 
the wildly unlikely. The one-in-a-million 
or one-in-a-billion chance. The indetermi- 
nate stops being indeterminate when a cra- 
ter-stone works on it. Most results are 
somewhere in a possible future. Not all, but 
most. If they are possible, they’re available 
tt> him.” 

liucky chewed, and swallowed. 

“Fella, I pulled for somebody to explain 
my luck to ms," he grunted. “I got my ex- 
planation. And I got some extra hunks of 
that stuff back yonder. One goes to Frances. 
You take the rest. I pulled for you to be a 
square guy. Now I’m just gonna watch.” 

"I don ! t know what you’ll see,” Steve told 
htm. “But that ought to make it possible for 
people who want to live like humans instead 
df beasts to do so. And if it can, it surely 
Will.” 

His lips set. There ! d been a small com- 
munity he’d seen, on his way from Thomas 
University to his home town. It was after 
b*$d withdrawn from membership in a gang 
that- called itself guerillas, and after he had 
evaded their attempted vengeance for the 
killing of one of their more prominent mem- 
bers. The community was a village of a 



OF CHANCE 33 

dozen or so houses and some surrounding 
farms. 

Steve had gone to them to warn them of 
an intended foray by the guerillas — a foray 
in quest of food and women. He joined them 
in an ambush of the guerillas. The looters 
were driven off. And Steve, scouting after 
the battered, wounded, snarling band, had 
been absent from the community when 
bombs fell on it. He saw the flares in the 
sky and felt the shocks in the earth. 

Steve returned to find gigantic craters 
where the village and most of the farms 
had been, and the blast-effect had destroyed 
all the rest. And he knew, then, that the fall- 
ing of bombs on that small and resolute vil- 
lage was not an accident. It followed too 
closely their success in defending them- 
selves against looters. It was the consequence 
of that success. 

The people who had planes and bombs 
wanted all other civilization destroyed. They 
preferred it to destroy itself. But they would 
let no seed of future rivalry survive. Un- 
questionably, among the looters and bandits 
there were agents of the people with planes 
and bombs, watching lest any sanity or de- 
cency remain anywhere. 

“It occurs to me,” said Steve suddenly, 
with narrowed eyes, “that if some of our 
friends recovered, back in town, they just 
barely might trail us, or they might tell some 
other people who’d take entirely too much 
interest in Frances’ system of self-defense.” 

Frances regarded him with unquestioning 
eyes. Lucky frowned meditatively. Steve 
considered — and Lucky handed him no less 
than two of the crater-stones, and passed 
one to Frances. They varied in size, those 
three, but they were essentially duplicates of 
Lucky’s own. 

[Turn pape] 



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34 STARTLING STORIES 



B UT Steve only nodded absently, for he 
was thinking. They went on along the 
abandoned railroad. Presently they came to 
a trestle across a small, fast-flowing stream. 

“In case our fine feathered friends back 
yonder trail us,’’ said Steve, “or in case they 
tell somebody else, we’ll build a raft that 
would carry us downstream. And our trail 
will definitely end.” 

Lucky unquestioningly set to work. They 
had no ax, so chopping was out of the ques- 
tion. But they dismantled a wooden fence 
and bound its bars together with wire from 
a single-strand cattle-fence of wire. They 
made three bundles and fastened them to- 
gether into a raft, fifteen feet long and four 
feet wide. They launched it. 

“And I’ll try out my new crater-stone,” 
said Steve. 

He put his hand in his pocket. His ex- 
pression grew satisfied. 

“It warmed up,” he observed. “Pine! Now 
we’ll cast the raft loose and wade upstream.” 
Lucky’s eyes crinkled with amusement. 
Frances stared. 

“Look,” said Steve, with a wave of his 
hand. “Anybody could tell we made a raft 
here. Anybody who wanted to trail us would 
follow the stream down. And I just used 
my crater-stone and pulled for the raft to 
float on merrily without grounding any- 
where until it gets to a fair-sized river. So 
even if it’s finally found, they’d still think 
we got off somewhere downstream from 
here.” 

Lucky chuckled. 

“You got a hunch, huh? You think things 
ain’t as disorganized as they look? I’m get- 
tin’ me an idea, too.” 

He splashed into the stream, joining Steve. 
But Frances rolled up her new whipcord 
slacks before she began to wade. 

Steve seemed now to have a definite des- 
tination in mind. He pushed the pace. Walk- 
ing in water was tiring, but he moved brisk- 
ly upstream, Frances followed, and Lucky 
brought up the rear. Lucky had a long, 
stout, sharp-pointed stick in his hand, split 
off from a fence-rail. For the first mile or so 
he seemed to use it as a walking-stick. Then 
he reversed it. Now and again he halted. 
Once he fell so far behind that Frances 
paused anxiously. 

“Hadn’t we better wait for him, Steve?” 
she asked. 

But then Lucky came into view, strolling 
in rippling water six inches above his an- 



kles, and Steve went on without comment 
They walked, altogether, nearly seven miles 
in shallowing water, by which time the 
stream was barely a brook and it was very- 
late afternoon, and practically dark. 

“It’s about five miles more to where I 
want to go tonight,” said Steve, in worried 
tones. “We’d better hit it up a little.” 

Frances looked very weary, but she rolled 
down her dampened slacks and uncomplain- 
ingly prepared to go on. Lucky glanced at 
her. “You tryin’ to make Frances work up a 
good appetite?” he said humorously. 

Steve shook his head. 

“I’m trying a new trick with the crater- 
stones. I’m trying to make them yield in- 
formation, indirectly. There used to be a 
house up this way that would be ideal for 
us to hole up in. A man I knew had it as 
a sort of hunting cabin. It’s out-of-the-way 
and as likely as any place to be still stand- 
ing. So I pulled for it that we’ll sleep in it 
tonight, in safety, after a meal we’ve gath- 
ered on the way. The stone warmed up. 

“If the house weren’t standing, it wouldn’t 
be possible for us to sleep in it. It wouldn’t 
be on the dice, so to speak. If there weren’t 
some happening tied in to it to be arranged, 
the stone wouldn’t have needed to warm up. 
When the two things are linked, the warming 
of the crater-stone means that both have to 
happen, and the house must still be standing 
and in shape to sleep in.” 

Lucky blinked. 

“Hey! That’s — ” He stopped. “Migosh, I 
see it! I pull to roll a thirteen on dice and 
the crater-stone won’t warm up unless one 
of ’em’s ci’acked. So if it warms up I know 
one’s cracked without lookin’ at it. Sure! 
Sure! So you know there’s a house there 
and it’s okay.” 

“We haven’t the grub yet,” said Steve. 

“Shucks,” said Lucky. “I had a sharp stick 
in my han’. I been stabbin’ at fish all the 
way upstream. I got seven, two big fellas 
and five little ones. Grub’s all set. Let’s go 
on and get a good night’s rest.” 

H E TOOK the lead, now, exuberant and 
happy. Steve and Frances followed. 
Frances was tired, but she smiled at Steve 
as he waited to help her up a steep place 
on the way they had to go. 

“That’s an awfully good trick,” she said. 
“Using a crater-stone to find out things. If 
you can make things happen and find things 
out—” 




THE LAWS OF CHANCE 



35 



"We can,” he told her. He held her hand 
to ensure her balance on tumbled rocks. 
“And I’ve found that all three of us are 
going to live through what’s coming. I 
pulled for the three of us to be together five 
years from today. And the crater-stone got 
warm. Thousands of millions of states of 
affairs could exist for all three of us five 
years from now, but now none are possible 
which don’t allow us to be alive and in the 
same spot.” 

It was very late dusk. The first faint stars 
winked into being. Shadows of the tall hills 
into which they made their way made it 
almost dark where they moved. Lucky, on 
ahead, was singing lustily to himself. And 
the footing became quite secure, but Steve 
still held Frances’ hand, as if unconsciously, 
and she let him, as if unaware. Yet the pres- 
sure of her fingers was warm and strong 
against his palm. 

“I didn’t realize it, but I know something 
of the future, too,” she said softly. “I wished 
for something. And it will happen.” 

“What?” 

She shook her head, smiling up at him. 

“You don’t want to fool with the things,” 
he said anxiously. “We’ve still got to find 
out how they work. Lucky got hit on the 
head as the result of one of his wishes only 
this morning. You’ve got to be awfully care- 
ful. They’re dangerous!” 

“Not what I wished for,” said Frances. 

Somehow, they were standing still and 
facing each other. Frances’ hand was firm 
and soft. She looked very wistful. She was 
very pretty, but as she looked up at him her 
smile was wavery and a little bit frightened, 
too. 

Suddenly he took her in his arms and 
kissed her. A dozen times over, with long- 
pent-up enthusiasm. And then he released 
her. 

“I’m sorry, Frances!” he said contritely. 
"I wanted you to feel safe with me, but 
you’re such a swell girl — I just couldn’t 
help it!” 

He gulped. He suddenly realized that he 
still had his arms around her, holding her 
fast so she couldn’t flee until he had placated 
her. 

Then he realized that she wasn’t trying to 
flee. She still looked a little scared. But 
she looked glad, too. 

“S-silly,” said Frances shakily. “Of course 
you kissed me. What do — what do you think 
I used the crater-stone to wish for?” 



CHAPTER VII 

Lucky Takes a Jaunt 



D ESPITE their haste, they reached the 
house late; when the moon in its last 
quarter was barely above the horizon. It 
was a small house and a snug one, built into 
the side of a hill, with many trees around it 
and tall second-growth beginning not far 
away. Steve and Lucky scouted it cautious- 
ly, weapons ready, and at last stood sniff- 
ing at smashed-in doors, and it was empty. 

But they searched it thoroughly in the 
darkness before they gathered in the big 
living room and Steve made a fire in the 
great stone fireplace. As its first flickers 
rose, he pounced upon long drapes, bunched 
in untidy heaps upon the floor. He was 
hanging them across window-openings be- 
fore Lucky realized what he was about. 

Then, as the light in the fireplace in- 
creased, the two of them prowled about — 
and Lucky went outside to make sure that 
no ray of light escaped, and Frances re- 
garded Steve with shining eyes and he 
kissed her again very satisfactorily — and 
made everything quite light-tight. 

“They blacked out cities back in old war 
times,” said Steve. “Later radar made that 
useless. Now that there’s no more civiliza- 
tion, a lighted window means somebody 
trying to get back to it. So the old-fashioned 
blackout comes in again.” 

“And the old-fashioned fish-fry comes 
back too,” said Lucky re-entering the room. 
“Only these got to broil before the fire.” 
As Lucky began to cook the fish he talked, 
meditatively. 

“You said somethin’ today that set me to 
thinkin’,” he said. “And you went to a lotta 
trouble to make sure we weren’t trailed here. 
What makes you so positive there’s some- 
thin’ — uh — phony about the way things are?” 
Steve told him of the small community 
he’d found in which the folk had resolutely 
tried to cling to all of decency and civiliza- 
tion that remained. He also told of the band 
which called itself guerillas, and how he’d 
killed a leading member, and how he had 
gone ahead to warn its prospective victims. 
Then he told of the victorious defense, and 
the bombs which fell upon the defenders 
afterward, obliterating them and all they’d 
fought for. 




36 STARTLING STORIES 



So somebody doesn’t want civilization to 
come back,” said Steve. “You see why, of 
course.” 

“Nope,” said Lucky. 

“There can’t be an atomic battle,” Steve 
pointed out. “There can only be atomic 
massacre. There can’t really be an atomic 
war. There can only be a contest in destruc- 
tion. And there can’t be conquest by atomie 
bombs. You can kill people with ’em, but 
yon can’t conquer them. So when this thing 
started, the United States couldn’t be con- 
quered. It could only be smashed. Which 
it was! Most of the world was smashed, too. 
But the part where the aggressors live, 
escaped. Not completely, I suspect, but 
after a fashion. Left alone, we Americans 
would start to build up our civilization again, 
because even an unharmed other nation 
couldn’t occupy all of America. These people 
probably didn’t have nearly enough people 
left They certainly haven’t ships and sup- 
plies to carry and maintain an occupying 
force. But if we built back, we’d be dan- 
gerous some day. So what would they do?” 

Lucky grunted. 

“I’m beginnin’ to guess, fella, and I’m 
mad!” 

“So am I,” Steve told him. “It isn’t all 
guessing. Those people would establish bases 
where they’d store planes and bombs. Those 
bases wouldn’t be used to conquer anything, 
just keep us from rebuilding anything. 
They’d send out spies with pocket radios, to 
roam around with looters and so on. They’d 
have their planes keep up surveys. Ploughed 
fields mean people still holding on. Where 
they found civilization hanging on, the spies 
would lead looters to rob and wreck it. If 
the looters failed, they’d use planes and 
bombs.” 

Lucky Connors growled a little. 

“It adds up, I think,” said Steve, care- 
fully. “If they can keep us at the level of 
animals for fifty years or a hundred, we’ll 
be merely savages, those of us or our chil- 
dren who’ll be left. And meanwhile the 
people who keep us degraded will be breed- 
ing feverishly in their own country, so that 
some day they can come over and occupy a 
nearly empty continent, peopled only by 
savages and not many of them. Possibly,” 
he added evenly, “it’s not only one continent 
they plan to reduce to savagery for their 
descendants to swarm over. Maybe it’s all 
the world. Maybe they plan one great nation 
of one blood which will people the whole 



earth. All they have to do is exterminate 
all other nations." 

Lucky growled again. 

“They ain’t goin’ to get away with it.” 

“No,” said Steve. “I’m beginning to hope 
they won’t.” 

UCKY stared at the fire. 

‘'Yeah,” he said presently. 'Tm be- 
ginnin’ to see somethin’ I’m goin’ to attend 
to, come tomorrow. Let’s get some deep.” 

They curled up before the fireplace, all 
three of them, and slept. Steve woke when 
Lucky shook him gently. He was wide 
awake on the instant. Lucky had pulled down 
one of the drapes they’d hung over the win- 
dows, and early sunlight streamed in. Lucky 
put his finger to his lips and nodded at 
Frances. Her fingers were intertwined in 
Steve’s, and he flushed awkwardly. But 
Lucky seemed not to notice. He beckoned 
Steve outside, leaving Frances still sleep- 
ing. 

“She’s a nice kid,” he said without ex- 
pression, once in the open air. “You’re goin’ 
to look after her, huh?” 

Steve looked at him sharply. 

“What’s up, Lucky?” 

“I’m duckin’ out,” said Lucky. “I’m kinda 
crazy about Frances. She’s kinda crazy 
about you. And I got that crater-stone 
that brings me luck, only it’s got limits. I 
wanted somethin’ the other day, and I got it, 
and I got a conk on the head because that 
was the only way I could get the rest of it. 
I learned somethin’.” 

Steve did not hear all of this very clearly. 
His mind was on Lucky admitting he was 
crazy about Frances. 

“What’re you driving at?” he demanded 
sharply. “If you think — ” 

“Guy,” said Lucky wrily, “I think Frances 
is a swell kid. A long time ago I pulled for 
luck for her. And she met you, and it was 
luck for her. Remember how you come to 
be with her? Okay! I pulled for luck for 
Frances. Then, presently, 1 pulled for her to 
like me. That was easy. 

“I went further and pulled for her to be 
crazy about me too, that was no go. It wasn’t 
on the dice. If she’s to be lucky and happy 
like I want her to be, lovin’ me ain’t in the 
layout There’s limits to what those rocks 
outa the craters will do. So — I’m clearin’ 
out.” 

Steve frowned, aware of very many mixed 
and incompatible emotions. There wasn’t 





THE LAWS OF CHANCE 



much to say. 

“But you’re needed, Lucky!” he said hon- 
estly. “Frances and I can’t do all that’s got 
to be done, even if we have crater-stones 
too!” 

“I know,” said Lucky, “I’ll be back. I’m 
gonna hunt me down one of those guys that 
reports to the fellas with planes and bombs. 
It’d be kinda interestin’ to hear him talk, if 
he got confidential. I — uh— think I can get 
him talkative. And I’ll be cornin’ back from 
time to time. Bein’ crazy about Frances the 
way I am, don’t mean hatin’ somebody she 
does care about. Only — she’s a good kid, 
fella! Treat her right, huh?” 

He looked searchingly at Steve, and then 
suddenly turned on his heel and marched 
away. Twice, Steve opened his mouth to 
call him back. Both times he closed it. Then 
Lucky disappeared in the thick undergrowth 
which began to grow a bare hundred yards 
from the house. 

He had been gone an hour when Frances 
woke and smiled at Steve. He was puttering 
about the fireplace, and his expression was 
grim. 

“Good morning!” she said brightly. Her 
smile vanished. “What’s the matter?” 

“Two things,” he told her. “For one, 
Lucky’s gone off.” 

Her face went blank. Carefully and pains- 
takingly, he repeated everything Lucky had 
said. Frances’ face softened. 

“He’s kind of sweet, isn’t he, Steve?” 

“He’s probably a better man than I am,” 
said Steve with some bitterness. “I couldn’t 
leave you to someone else because you’d be 
happier with them! I couldn’t give you up 
even for your own happiness!” 

“But Steve!” said Frances convincingly. 
“I wouldn’t want you to. I wouldn’t want to 
be happy with anybody else.” 

His expression did not lighten. 

“There’s something else. After Lucky 
left, I went poking around. I told you I 
was here years ago. There’ve been improve- 
ments. A dam across a stream half a mile 
away. There’s an electric generator there, 
big enough to light this house and heat it 
too, in winter. And the man who owned this 
place must have survived the first bombings, 
because he tried to get set to last things 
out. He got hold of some supplies. Seeds, 
and so on. Seeds of various staple crops that 
could be grown in this neighborhood. He 
even had machines to clear the land. All 
looted or spoiled now, of course.” 



37 

H E STOPPED. Frances watched his 
face. 

"Well?” 

“Looters came,” said Steve without ex- 
pression. “You’ve seen what they did to the 
house.” 

Frances looked about her. She’d known the 
place was not intact, of course. Broken-in 
doors. Hangings on the floor. Now she saw 
books flung contemptuously about. The place 
had been looted and fouled and smashed. 
It had not been fired, because it was built 
of field-stone. It had been ransacked for 
anything that human beasts had desired, 
but they wanted little more than food and 
drink and weapons, these days. They smashed 
or threw aside everything else. 

“What happened, Steve?” 

“They smashed his skull in,” said Steve. 
“I just buried him. Not that one dead man 
more or less amounts to much these days. 
It all happened months ago. But there are 
looters who know about this place. They’ve 
been here. They’ll probably come back. 
Staying here means taking a chance.” 

"Chance, Steve?” Frances said. “Aren’t 
you the man who said we can’t do miracles, 
but that we can do the improbable and the 
wildly unlikely and the one-in-a-million 
and one-in-a-billion tricks? You want to 
stay. I think we’d better. Maybe we can 
make a garden, for food, and with an electric 
generator and such things to work with, 
Steve, couldn’t you set to work to — try to 
find out how to make the crater-stones start 
to build back a world fit to live in?” 

“Pretty words,” said Steve bitterly. “But 
right now the people who have planes and 
bombs have made us no better than beasts. 
Look here; I love you, and you love me. It 
ought to be something magnificent, some- 
thing we could boast of, something to fill us 
with pride, but how can we get married? 
Hang it, human beings can’t even marry 
any more! They can only mate. And that’s 
not enough for the way I feel about you.” 
Frances went a little bit pale. Then she 
smiled. 

“Thanks, Steve. I feel that way, too. But 
what would you do? Start out on a probably 
hopeless pilgrimage to find a surviving 
preacher?” 

“Useless,” growled Steve. “And stupid! 
If you’re not afraid of looters, we’d better 
stay here. Lucky will look for us here. I’ve 
got work to do. Somebody’s got to do it. 
Hang it, the world can’t stay like this!” 




38 STARTLING STORIES 



He swung on his heel, suddenly, and 
stamped out of the house. And Frances 
looked at the third finger of her left hand. 
There was no ring on it She looked at it 
very queerly. 

But presently, while Steve explored the 
possibilities of the electric generator, she 
set to work to clean house in a very house- 
wifely fashion. 



CHAPTER VIII 
Echoes of Battle 



W HILE driving a nail that had bent 
unexpectedly, Steve had mashed his 
finger and he could not write. So he was 
dictating, and Frances faithfully put down 
his words in the fourth of six child’s copy- 
books which already contained a good part 
of a treatise on the paradox of indeterminacy. 

‘Indeterminacy, then,” said Steve, scowl- 
ing at the wall, “is merely a term for a 
normal state of balance among particles, 
caused by an equilibrium among forces. 'Hie 
laws of chance are the laws of this equilib- 
rium. Variations from probability, then, are 
results of changes in the forces acting at a 
given spot and time. But as a new equilib- 
rium is arrived at, variations from proba- 
bility cancel out. Er — have you got that, 
Frances?” 

She nodded. 

“But die important thing is the way the 
crater-stones work, Steve,” she said. “We 
don’t know that. It still seems like magic.” 
"But it isn’t,” he protested indignantly. 
“It isn’t even new. Rhine, at Duke Univer- 
sity, proved that you can pull for things 
and change the laws of chance. And he had 
the devil of a time separating tests for extra- 
sensory perception and telepathy from tests 
for fore-knowledge. 

“Rhine even found he could prove occa- 
sional fore-knowledge so easily that it 
messed up the evidence for telepathy. You 
see what that means? Back in Nineteen-for- 
ty-four and even Forty-three, his test sub- 
jects were making seven come too often for 
chance, on dice, and proving that somehow 
they could tell in advance what a later 
check-up would disclose. So what does a 
crater-stone do that wasn’t normal scienti- 
fic observation a long time ago? That wasn’t 
text-book stuff? It’s perfectly natural!” 



“I said we don’t know how it works,” 
protested Frances. 

“We’ve got blamed good guesses,” he pro- 
tested in turn. “Look, Frances — you’ve 
heard of sympathetic vibration and you’ve 
heard of resonances. You’ve held a coffee- 
pot when a railroad whistle or some par- 
ticular note from a radio made it vibrate 
violently, haven’t you? And you’ve heard of 
forced vibrations?” 

Frances smiled at him. While she wrote at 
his dictation, she could not look at him. Now 
they were in the big living room of the 
house they had appropriated for their own. 
Steve had made stout wooden shutters — he’d 
tom down an out-building for material — 
which closed all window openings at night 
and not let a particle of light escape. But 
this was daytime, and light streamed in. 

The books that had been flung about in 
a frenzy of destructiveness were back in 
place, though with great gaps where looters 
had burned some for fuel. There were ob- 
vious emptinesses where furniture had been, 
and the pieces which remained were mostly 
slashed or scarred in sheer wantonness. 

What could be done to retrieve a feeling 
of normal life had been done. Quite possibly, 
Steve and Frances were better housed than 
any other two people in North America — 
outside of the places where people had 
planes and bombs. 

“It works like this,” said Steve firmly. 
“Suppose I have a violin-string tuned to 
the note A. I pluck or bow it. It gives off 
an A. Then suppose I leave it alone, but 
sound the same note with a pitch-pipe or 
another string? The first string will vibrate 
by sympathy, won’t it? By resonance?” 

“Oh, yes — and so will the octaves,” said 
Frances. “If you push down the loud pedal 
of a piano and strike an A, all the A octaves 
up and down will vibrate too. You can feel 
them with your fingers, if the piano’s in 
tune.” 

“Only there probably aren’t any pianos 
left, so we can’t verify that,” said Steve 
drily. “What I’m getting at is that if I have 
a violin-string tuned to A and I sound a D 
note with something else, then if the D note 
is loud enough — but it has to be very loud — 
the string will vibrate a D. But not all of 
it — the length that tunes to D — the length 
that would vibrate if I fingered the violin 
to make it sound a D instead of A.” 

Frances considered, and then nodded and 
shrugged her shoulders. “Well?” 




THE LAWS 

“Something that happens makes a mental 
impression just as a plucked violin-string 
makes a sound,” said Steve. “Seeing a thing 
happen is like hearing a note. Remembering 
or imagining a thing happening is like sound- 
ing a note. When — without the crater-stone 
— I pull for a seven to come up on dice, it’s as 
if I were sounding an A-note for a violin- 
string to respond to. My brain, unassisted, 
can’t sound that note very strongly, but it 
can sound it strongly enough to make a 
seven come up more often than it would 
otherwise.” 

S TEVE paused for a moment, to find the 
right words so she would understand. 
“But the crater-stone echoes my piping 
little note and amplifies it,” he went on. “It’s 
like humming into a microphone hooked to 
a monstrous public-address system. The 
same hum comes out a hundred thousand or 
a hundred million times amplified. What I 
get is a note that’s strong enough to force 
a vibration. 

“With my voice I can’t make a violin A- 
string sound a D. But with a speech-ampli- 
fier I can. With my mind I can only make 
things more likely. With a crater-stone, 
using the energy of breaking-down matter to 
amplify what my mind does, I can make 
happenings, if they’re possible.” 

“And sometimes,” said Frances, “some- 
times the trick doesn’t work because — ” 
“Sometimes,” said Steve, “I can’t make an 
A-string sound D because it’s broken. Or 
maybe it’s tuned to E, and none of it is 
long enough to vibrate a D. Sometimes a 
happening — well — isn’t on the dice. All clear 
now?” 

“If you’d dictate something like that,” 
admitted Frances, “it wouldn’t sound quite 
as much like gibberish as your technical 
manner. But Steve — ” 

“What?” 

“We haven’t anything for dinner.” 

“We’ll go look in the fish-trap,” he told 
her. 

Two or three minutes later they emerged 
from the house together. Neither of them 
ever left the building alone, or unarmed. 
Their arms consisted solely of the tiny auto- 
matic Steve had given Frances within an 
hour of their first meeting, and the revolver 
from the plastic suit-case. Both were very 
short of shells. 

Of course, both Steve and Frances carried 
a crater-stone each. Steve had fashioned 



OF CHANCE 39 

holders for them out of a bit of lead drain- 
pipe, but he could not discover that the 
crater-stones had a normal rate of dis- 
integration capable of producing burns. 

Apparently the enormous bombardment of 
uranium by the radiation of an atomic bomb 
produced a substance completely new in all 
its qualities. In all likelihood, for example, 
it was capable of resisting even the tempera- 
tures of an atomic explosion. 

“If my father hadn’t been killed,” said 
Frances presently, “and if I knew him, by 
this time he’d be trying to make an artificial 
device to do what the crater-stones do.” 

“Do you think I’m not working my head 
off at that?” demanded Steve. He added 
bitterly, “But I’m working practically at 
random. I’ve got to try ten thousand or a 
hundred thousand things until I hit on it 
practically by chance — ” . 

Then he stopped and swore disgustedly. 

“I’m a half-wit! By chance! And the 
crater-stones control chance! If I could find 
out that this house was intact, without see- 
ing it, I ought to be able to find out if a 
given line of experiment will turn up what 
I want, without trying it. All I have to do 
is pull for it to work, and if the crater- 
stone warms up — ” 

They came to the place where the fish- 
trap was. A dam a hundred feet wide held 
back a small brisk mountain stream and 
made a pond all of half a mile long. Steve 
had put a distinctly unethical fish-trap in it, 
which every day produced perch and trout 
sufficient for their needs. 

In odd spots, too, he had tiny crops grow- 
ing. The looters had taken everything they 
could use, and doubtless intended to spoil 
the rest, but spilled com- grains remained 
fcrr Steve to plant in little clumps of no more 
than half a dozen stalks at any one place. 

In the looted pantry, too, there had been 
some rotted vegetables. Tomato-seeds were 
salvageable from a dried-up mess on the 
floor. With electric power for warmth, and 
a snug house, Steve planned to move some 
plants indoors and have food during the 
cold weather by hot-house cultivation. 

He fumbled in the fish-trap and hauled 
out a good-sized trout by the gills. He 
reached in again, trying to corner another 
of the wildly darting, imprisoned creatures. 

“I’m a half-wit!” he repeated bitterly. “Of 
course I can duplicate what the crater- 
stones do. I can practically make them tell 
me how. I can work out a line of research 




40 STARTLING STORIES 



and see if the answer’s there by pulling for it 
to turn up. If it can, the erater-stone will 
warm up and make it sure I’ll find it. Oh, 
I’m an imbecile!” 

H E STRAIGHTENED up, and Frances 
raised one hand. She had turned her 
head and was listening with a desperate 
concentration. She was a little bit pale. 

Steve froze. He listened, too. Then he 
quietly put down the still-flapping fish and 
drew his revolver. Both of them, then, 
waited very tensely. 

Two hundred yards away, a head appeared. 
There was a blood-stained bandage about 
it. It was unshaven and haggard. A second 
head. A third. They stared at the house. 
They conferred. Three men broke cover and 
ran stealthily toward it, but dragging their 
feet as if at the last gasp of exhaustion. 

One of the men carried a shotgun. An- 
other carried a six-foot bow. The third had 
an unwieldy contrivance which, at a guess, 
was a cross-bow made with automobile- 
spring leaves to hurl its bolt. All three men 
were ragged. Each had been wounded and 
bandaged and wounded again. They ran 
heavily toward the house, dodging exhaust- 
edly behind trees to cover their advance. 
“Hello, there!” Steve called sharply. 
Frances started a little and unconsciously 
moved closer to him. The three stopped as 
if shot. They wheeled. Then they came 
toward Steve. The man with the shotgun 
held it ominously ready. The man with the 
bow had an arrow to the string. The cross- 
bowman had the wire cord of his contrivance 
drawn back, and doubtless a bolt ready in 
the groove. But as they came closer to 
Steve, they bunched as for mutual support. 
They moved with the air not so much of 
menace as of desperation. 

“The devil!” said Steve, looking from one 
to another of them. “You’re honest men. 
Wonders will never cease.” 

“Sure we’re honest men,” one of the three 
said in a choked voice. “How many cut- 
throats have you got hidden, you that stand 
there and laugh at us!” 

“No cutthroats,” said Steve. His eyes nar- 
rowed suddenly. “You’re scouts, eh? Going 
on ahead to try to find — ” 

Very, very thin and far away, a high- 
pitched yell came through the bright morn- 
ing sunshine. After it came the muted, dis- 
tant sound of a shot. The three men turned 
their heads from Steve to that sound. One 



of them sobbed. 

“Blast ’em! Oh, blast ’em! Come on, let’s 
get killed!” 

He whirled. 

“What’s that?” Steve snapped. “Your 
rear-guard? How many of you?” 

“Fifteen men and the women and kids,” 
the bearded man with the shotgun said 
heavily. “There’s a gang of guerillas been 
chasin' us four days. They got near half of 
us. Now they’ll get the rest.” 

He turned drearily to go where a thin, 
shrill, triumphant howling rose. There were 
two more shots. The bearded man’s face 
worked. 

“Get the women in the house,” said Steve 
fiercely. “It’s stone. They can’t burn you 
out. We’ll hold ’em off there.” 

“What with?” panted the crossbowman, 
despairingly. “Might as well get killed right 
off.” 

“Come along, Frances!” said Steve angrily. 
“Well find the women, whoever they are. 
You lead ’em to the house and barricade 
the doors and windows. I’ll take the men and 
we’ll see what the crater-stones can do.” 

He was already running with her, hand in 
hand, in the wake of the three wierdly 
assorted individuals who now toiled exhaust- 
edly toward a confused and intermittent 
sound of battle. 

Where they ran all was quietude and 
peace — a bright summer sun drenched trees 
and grass and weeds with shimmering golden 
light. The small valley below the house, 
and the forests which covered the hillsides, 
were empty of any sign of life save the 
green things themselves. Insects sounded 
everywhere in the bland and warmth- 
intoxicated shrilling of midsummer. Some- 
where a bob-white quail called tranquilly. 

But a man’s death-shriek came faintly 
from far away. There was another shot in the 
distance. Steve and Frances dived into the 
trees after the drearily running trio they 
had intercepted. 

“What can you do with the crater-stones?” 
asked Frances, between panting breaths. 

“I don’t know,” grunted Steve, pounding 
on. “But they’re honest folk, those three. 
They bunched when they came close to us 
instead of spreading out. If they’ve got 
women with them, they’re what the guerillas 
are after. The worst of it is, there’ll be 
somebody with a pocket radio among the 
guerillas, most likely. There was in the 
gang I met, once upon a time.” 




THE LAWS OF CHANCE 41 



Yells — far ahead, but nearer than they had 
been. They saw a scared, flurried movement 
in the underbrush. Women. 

“You mean — if we help beat off — the 
guerillas,” panted Frances, “the — people with 
planes and bombs will — bomb us?” 

“That’s the idea,” ’ Steve growled. “Take 
the women to the house and barricade it! 
I’ll be back.” 

“Be careful!” she called desperately after 
him. “Please be careful!” 

But he was gone, diving through brush- 
wood, jumping fallen tree-trunks, running 
through thick woods toward an inchoate, 
spasmodic tumult in which men fought like 
beasts and some died quite otherwise. There 
were two sides in that battle. Steve was 
known to neither. Each was likely to think 
he belonged to the other side. 



CHAPTER IX 
Besieged 



IGHTFALL descended and the bat- 
tered, oak-beamed living room of the 
house was very dark. Children slept in the 
abandon of absolute exhaustion close by 
it. There were other figures lying on the 
floor. Women tended some of those figures. 
There were three women with babies, which 
they held tightly in their arms. Some men 
squatted against the wall, crude weapons at 
hand, drooping in utter weariness. 

Frances found Steve peering from an 
upper window. There was a great fire burn- 
ing a hundred and fifty yards down hill. 
There were figures about it. There was 
yapping talk coming from the fireside. 

“My guess,” said Steve, growling, “is that 
somebody’s trying to talk them into making 
a rush and they haven’t much stomach for 
it. We did plenty of damage in those woods!” 
“I saw you were safe,” said Frances un- 
easily. “But I’ve been trying to help the 
women, and some of the men are wounded. 
I was so afraid the people you were trying 
to help would kill you.” 

“I was pulling they wouldn’t,” said Steve 
drily. “And there was a shaving-kit in those 
suitcases, remember. I was shaved. To our 
friends that meant I was civilized. The 
guerillas don’t bother.” 

Frances peered out the window toward the 
leaping flames. At least, she seemed to. 



Actually, It was an excuse for being com- 
fortingly close to Steve for a moment. 

“Do you think they’ll try to storm the 
house?” 

“Probably,” said Steve reflectively. “It’s a 
long arrow-shot to the fire. But maybe the 
crossbow could reach it. Get that chap with 
the crossbow, Frances. Tell him to come up 
here. And whoever has the strongest bow.” 

“But — Steve! You told Lucky and me that 
you warned some people once that the 
guerillas were coming, and they beat off 
the guerillas, and— -bombs fell and wiped 
them out.” 

“Yes,” said Steve curtly. “Guerillas and 
looters are wiping out the last traces of civi- 
lization, and so long as they’re winning, the 
people with planes and bombs don’t inter- 
fere. But if anybody is strong enoqgh to 
stand off looters, somebody among the loot- 
ers talks into a pocket radio and a plane 
takes care of the situation. Economical! How 
to destroy a civilization: give bajidits a free 
hand and use bombs only where decency 
is able tQ defend itself! Go get that cross- 
bowman and somebody with a strong bow, 
won’t you?” 

She hesitated, and he kissed her, there in 
the darkness by the open window. 

“We’re chaperoned, now,” he said drily. 
“Go on!” 

She went away, feeling her way down the 
unlighted steps to the great living room with 
its feeble flickering ruddy light. When she 
came back, two of the fugitives came with 
her. 

“The guerillas are holding a council of 
war, down by the fire there,” Steve told 
them. “They’re working out plans for storm- 
ing the house. Can you drop an arrow or two 
or a bolt or two among them?” 

“I ain’t a expert,” the bowman said 
wearily. “I made a bow and arrows because 
there wasn’t anything else to shoot with.” 

“And as for me, I thought this crossbow 
would be good,” the crossbowman admitted. 
“And I did get a couple of guerillas. But Fm 
no sharpshooter.” 

“Try it just the same,” Steve urged. “Just 
let the thing fly high and fall near the fire. 
I guarantee results.” 

Frances caught her breath. He could. An 
arrow shot into the air, however inexpertly 
aimed to*fall among the men about the camp- 
fire, would have one chance in a thousand or 
two of striking one of the figures. And if one 
had a crater-stone which controlled chance, 





42 STARTLING STORIES 

that one-in-a-thousand chance was the only He found a man. One man, alone. That 
one which could happen. one man muttered quietly, and stopped as 



The bowman loosed an arrow, aimed high 
and pulled all the way back. There was a 
long, long wait. Then a sudden startled 
hubbub about the fire. 

“It hit,” said Steve. “Now you two, take 
turns and let off as many as you can as 
fast as you can. I think you’ll be lucky.” 
The crossbowman loosed a bolt. The bow- 
man, another arrow. The crossbowman 
again. The archer. Yells and screams and 
howls of fury came from the fire circle. 

There was no suspicion that the missiles 
came from the house. The fire was too 
accurate and too deadly. The guerillas 
thought they were being ambushed from 
the woods and undergrowth. They dived 
away from the fire and sought their attack- 
ers. They found — sometimes — each other. 

A HALF hour later there was a lurid red 
glow over a hilltop, and Steve raged 
impotently. 

“They’ve fired the generator-shack!” he 
told Frances bitterly. “And I’d figured we’d 
start using electricity in a day or two. May- 
be they’ll wreck the dam.” 

He stood irresolute a moment, and then 
fury got the best of him. 

“I’m going out,” he said savagely. "I’m 
safe enough; we’ve got a date for five years 
from now, with Lucky.” 

“We’ll — be together in five years,” said 
Frances shakily, “but we won’t necessarily 
be alive, Steve! If anything happens to 
you — ” 

“Use the crater-stone,” he told her. “I’m 
going out!” 

He went downstairs, still raging. He sum- 
moned two of the newcomers and had them 
stand guard by a repaired, battered door — 
with no faintest light behind it — while he 
opened it silently and slipped out into the 
darkness. 

Despite his fury, he was cautious. He lay 
close behind the wall for a long time. He 
heard no sounds which were not obviously 
natural. No one massed for an attack, cer- 
tainly. After a long time he moved away 
from the building. He found nothing, save 
one groaning figure which he avoided. 

An hour after his first emergence, he 
heard a low muttering sound. He trailed 
it, moving with infinite caution. He knew the 
ground about the house now, and he was 
able to progress with Indianlike silence. 



if listening for a reply, and muttered again. 
He was not speaking English. Steve could 
not hear the syllables clearly enough to tell 
what the language was, but he knew that it 
was not English. 

There was a surge of frenzied hatred 
which swept over him. Then he lay still. 
Very still He waited until the conversa- 
tion was ended. There was a tiny clicking 
sound, and then a stirring where the talk 
had been. A man moved away. One man 
only. 

Steve let him get well on ahead, and then 
trailed. A mile on, he grew deliberately 
careless. He limped. He crashed through 
bushes. He made whimpering noises to him- 
self. He heard the sounds of the other man’s 
progress stop. He blundered on, moaning a 
little, and limping more markedly than be- 
fore. 

Then he heard a thrashing. He snarled in 
a high-pitched, scared tone: 

“Who’s that?” 

“Me,” said a voice in the darkness, some- 
how amused. “You hurt?” 

“Yeah!” snarled Steve. 

He seemed to stumble and pitch head- 
long. The other man came to him as he 
rolled and grumbled. Steve got his legs 
under him. He was crouched when the other 
figure loomed over him. He rose, and the 
little foil struck aside a branch and slid into 
flesh with the curious sliding resistance 
Steve had learned to know. 

Three minutes later he had found a small 
instrument which could be concealed under 
a man’s armpit. He reflected with some 
grimness that the discovery justified his un- 
warned attack, which would have been 
assassination under other circumstances. But 
atomic war allowed of no ethics at all. 

This man had been with the guerilla band. 
He’d lingered after his fellows fled. They 
thought they were attacked by deadly fig- 
ures from the wood. They could not imagine, 
of course, that arrows and crossbow bolts 
could be shot with such absolute accuracy 
from the house. The chances against every 
missile finding its target would have been 
too great to believe in, and they knew of no 
solution to the paradox of the indetermin- 
ate. So the guerillas had fled into the dark- 
ness, seeing enemies behind every tree- 
trunk, and frequently finding them. 

Only this man had remained until all was 




THE LAWS OF CHANCE 43 



quiet, and then he’d fired the dynamo-shed 
as a minor blow, and later still he’d used this 
pocket microwave transmitter. He was a 
spy for the people with planes and bombs, 
guiding guerillas to loot and bum and kill, 
so that any trace of human life above the 
savage stage would be eradicated. 

The burning question was, would he have 
reported a defense by people civilized enough 
to need bombing, or on a strictly barbaric 
level? Would he have reported the attackers 
from the dark as another band of guerillas 
who would undoubtedly carry out the mis- 
sion the defeated looters had in mind? 



B ACK at the house, Steve consulted with 
Frances. He showed her the little 
transmitter and no less than two automatic 
pistols and a precious store of cartridges 
he’d found on the spy’s body. 

“They were routed with arrows,” he told 
her, frowning. “They also thought they were 
finding enemies all over the woods, though 
they were actually fighting each other. The 
logical thing for him to report would be that 
his gang ran into another, which chased his 
gang off to do the murdering and raping 
his mob planned, themselves. But I think 

[ Turn page] 



THE LOST YEAR OF LIFE! 

O NE August morning William Boyce was walking 
south of the library on Fifth Avenue, in New 
York, past the stone lions that guard the stone 
steps — and then suddenly he was in a hospital bed in 
Bellevue, one year later! 

Was it amnesia? Boyce tried to believe it was, tried 
to slip back into the familiar grooves of life and pick 
up where he had abruptly left off a year ago. But it 
didn’t work. What had happened to Boyce was 
something more than amnesia! 

He was drawn irresistibly to that lost time — because 
of the crystal he had found in his pocket upon his 
release from Bellevue. It was not large, but it was cut 
strangely and it was perfectly transparent. And he 
felt uncomfortable when he did not have it in Ms 
pocket. He could not have said why. 

Then — a familiar room brought back the memory 
of a mysterious, elusive girl — and the crystal, held 
before the fireplace, reflected strange and fantastic patterns. Suddenly Boyce found himself trans- 
ported to a world of sorcery — a country of inverted time! And there be set forces into motion 
which will astound you— while opening new vistas of imagination and scientific speculation! 
Look forward to a masterpiece of science fiction, packed with breath-taking, pulse-stirring 
surprises! 

LANDS OF THE EARTHQUAKE 

A Complete Fantastic Novel 

By HENRY KUTTNER 

COMING NEXT ISSUE— PLUS MANY OTHER STORIES AND FEATURES! 






44 STARTLING STORIES 



we’d better move away eight or ten miles for 
a week or so, just in case tliis house is 
bombed.” 

Frances shook her head. 

“We can’t do it, Steve. One of the babies 
is sick. Desperately sick. And two of the 
men couldn’t walk ten miles. All of them 
are completely worn out They just can’t 
go any farther! They’ve been fighting a 
rear-guard action for four days already. 
They’re exhausted. So — I used my crater- 
stone. I pulled for it that the baby’d get 
well and be playing in the sun in front of 
the house day after tomorrow. And the cra- 
ter-stone warmed.” 

Steve considered. 

“Then it will happen. Crazy, isn’t it? If the 
baby can play in front of the house day after 
tomorrow, there can’t be a bombing. Evi- 
dently it’s on the dice that we can escape for 
awhile, and the possibilities which would 
prevent it are blocked off now. But I wish 
you wouldn’t use those things, Frances! 
They must be radioactive when they warm 
up. So I’ve got to figure out a way to do 
what they do, without them.” 

‘T wish you could, Steve. If I could under- 
stand, it wouldn’t seem so much like magic.” 

He ran his hand through his hair, in exas- 
peration. 

“But it’s not magic. It’s physics! It’s no 
more magic than radar. If you’d read all the 
way through my copybooks you’d under- 
stand it perfectly. It’s simply forced reso- 
nance. We picture something in our minds 
and the crater-stone amplifies it, and the 
happening we imagine — if it exists in a possi- 
ble future — gets charged up with that extra 
energy, and the equilibrium of things in 
general can only be restored by that thing 
happening. That’s all. It’s perfectly simple.” 

He looked longingly at the tiny micro- 
wave set. 

“I’d like to look this thing over, but I 
need good light and it’s hours until dawn. 
Go get some sleep.” 

Himself, he went out again and to the still- 
glowing embers of the generator-house by 
the dam. The dynamo was ruined. The reek 
of scorched insulation mingled with the 
stinging smell of smouldering wood. Steve 
was too disheartened to try to quench the 
embers with water from the pond. 

“We’re savages,” he told himself savagely. 
“We fight with bows and arrows. We’ve no 
lamps — not even candles— and our only light 
is an open fire. Those crater-stones are 



simply freaks. Maybe Frances and I can 
keep going with them, but we can’t build up 
a civilization with a few hunks of accidental 
mineral. Now we’ve a pack of refugees on 
our hands and we can’t feed them, and the 
electricity I figured I could tinker with has 
gone to the devil!” 

He heard his own voice, complaining and 
querulous. He stopped. 

“Maybe I’d better go out and cut my 
throat,” he said wryly. “I’ll cart some fish 
back to the house and poke into that radio 
set as soon as it’s light.” 

He did. There was no point in trying to 
capture individual fish. He hauled the whole 
trap out of the water and slung it over his 
shoulder. One of the younger fugitives had 
been sent scouting. He helped Steve bear 
the load. Steve had noticed the boy — a 
gangling youngster of sixteen or there- 
abouts. 

“Bob,” said Steve. “Do you know any- 
thing about electricity?” 

“I had a television set,” the boy told him 
awkwardly. “I put it together myself, and it 
worked.” 

“M-mmm,” Steve began. “There’s a gen- 
erator up by the dam at the end of the pond. 
It did make electricity to light and heat the 
house. Those fellows last night burned down 
its shed. It looks like it’s ruined, but maybe 
some of the inner layers of wire can be 
salvaged and we can rewind it by hand. 
Want to take a look at it?” 

“Yes, sir!” The boy’s face lighted up. 

“Go to it, then,” said Steve. 

W HEN he reached the house, dawn- 
Hght was beginning, to the east. He 
turned over the fish to a competent-looking 
young farmer, on sentry duty near the house. 
And Frances had not gone to sleep. She was 
watching for him. She slipped her hand into 
his. 

“You seemed so uneasy, Steve, when you 
went out. Do you feel better now?” 

“Outside of various problems,” he said 
drily, “such as how to find food for all these 
people, and how to make a ruined generator 
generate electricity, and how — without in- 
formation or equipment — to make something 
that will do what the crater-stones do so we 
can understand ’em and make the most of 
them, and how to keep guerillas away with- 
out being suspected of holding on to the de- 
cencies of life.” 

He almost ran out of breath. 




45 



THE LAWS OF CHANCE 



“In short, outside erf feeling that there’s 
not much use in trying, I’m all right.” 

She bent close and whispered in his ear. 

“Thanks,” he said moodily. “The feeling 
is mutual. But I insist that until I’m some- 
thing more than a witch doctor doing 
mumbo-jumbo with magic stones, until I’m 
a civilized man again— Oh, blast it!” Then 
he said abruptly, “The light’s good enough. 
I’m going to look at that pocket radio.” 

She ran indoors and brought it to him. He 
regarded it sourly. 

“Only a spy should ever see this. So just 
possibly, in case a spy was killed by acci- 
dent, they might have tricked it up. I’ll be a 
little bit cagey.” 

He moved a hundred feet away. He worked 
busily, while she watched him. Presently 
there was a sharp popping sound and she 
gasped. But he waved his hand reassuringly. 
After a few moments he came back. 

“Thorough, systematic people, our friends 
with planes and bombs! If you open this 
thing the obvious way, it explodes. I cut it 
open from the back, so it didn’t. That popping 
you heard was the detonator-cap, after I’d 
taken out the explosive.” 

He spread out the opened small contriv- 
ance. There were tiny, almost microscopic 
radio-tubes. There were infinitesimal con- 
ductors and inductances. A minute battery. 
And there were two dials beside the midget 
microphone and miniature speaker. 

He regarded it for a long time. 

“Nice,” he said at last, ironically. “Won- 
derfully nice. It’s a microwave set If a 
plane’s high enough in the stratosphere, this 
can contact it even several hundred miles 
away. They beam the microwaves by using 
the foil speaker-cone as a reflector. Look! 
This dial is set to a fixed frequency. It points 
to the source of a signal of that frequency 
only. The odds are that it’s to enable spies to 
get into touch with each other on the ground 
and cooperate in their deviltry. Pretty, eh? 

“This dial points toward any other elec- 
trical disturbance. If we had that dynamo 
running, any spy could get a line on it. Or 
any internal-combustion engine could be 
spotted or anything at all that made a spark 
now and then. A good way to locate any 
small oasis of civilization, eh? 

“If we had electric lights or current or 
even used a flashlight, sooner or later some 
spy would be led to us with absolute cer- 
tainty, either to bring guerillas to wipe us 
out, or to arrange for bombs.” 



He stopped and laughed without mirth. 

“You see how that changes the picture^ 
don’t you? If we use electricity in any 
form we’ll be spotted. If we’re spotted we’ll 
be destroyed. If we defend ourselves against 
looters, we’ll be bombed. If we don’t,- we’ll 
be killed. 

“If we hang on without trying to keep 
anything of civilization, we’ll forget it all. If 
we even try to be decent, we’ll be hunted 
down by all the scum of the earth, aided by 
every technical device that ingenuity can 
contrive! Isn’t it a picture, now? What price 
crater-stones against that set-up, Frances? 
Want to go out with me now and let’s cut our 
throats?” 



CHAPTER X 
Stalemated 



f N ALL there had been twenty-two men 
originally, and eighteen women, and al- 
most as many children ranging from babies 
in arms to Bob, the television enthusiast who 
had helped Steve carry the fish. The day be- 
fore there had been fifteen men left. Today 
there were eleven. And of the eighteen 
women only twelve remained. 

In their hearts burned hatred so terrible 
that it was a corrosive hurt. The hatred was 
for guerillas, of course, but also it was di- 
rected against those unknown, unseen, un- 
identifiable people who had aeroplanes and 
atomic bombs. 

The refugees knew that there was a link 
between the guerillas and the bombs. Wher- 
ever honest folk fought to hold to every- 
thing that separated men from animals, loot- 
ers turned up to destroy them. If the looters 
failed, bombs came screaming down from 
seemingly empty sky. 

Perhaps not all the guerillas knew of the 
link. Perhaps only chosen, talented leaders 
had this cooperation. There was no need to 
encourage most looters. There are always 
some people who seize upon any catastrophe 
to behave as beasts, and in the atomic war 
it was an advantage to be a beast. Honest 
men tended to group together for mutual 
aid and protection. 

But under the conditions of atomic war, 
such assemblages only made more vulner- 
able targets for bombs, or objectives for 
guerilla raids. And surely there was de- 




« STARTLING STORIES 



tailed information given somehow to make 
murder and rapine the easier. Leaders 
had sprung up with intuitive knowledge of 
spots where food and victims for amusing 
brutality could be found. Steve now had 
evidence that their intuition came in small 
instruments, in microwave communication 
sets. 

The people now tacitly accepting his lead- 
ership had come to the same conclusion 
without his definite evidence. They had been 
a group of farmers and their families, close- 
ly knit by blood- ties, who had not followed 
the common urge of normal folk. 

They had been fiercely independent and 
their small holdings were remote from the 
rich lands the looters preyed on at first. They 
were watchful. They were prudent. They 
closed ranks when the world collapsed about 
them, and tried to go on sturdily as before. 
Their houses were close together, but did not 
form a village. For a long time they escaped 
notice. But they used ploughs, and ploughed 
land shows up clearly in air -photographs. 

A single ragged wanderer appeared, beg- 
ging food. They gave It to him, and now 
bitterly regretted that they did not kill him 
with torture, instead. Because he went away, 
vowing gratitude, and two weeks later loot- 
ers converged upon their community from 
three directions. 

Watchfulness prevented surprise. The 
farmers grimly conceded to themselves that 
they could not fight all three bands. They 
attacked one, furiously, and almost wiped 
it out They acquired fresh arms and at- 
tacked the second looting band with even 
greater success. The third retreated precip- 
itately, and then bombs fell from the sky and 
their farms were wiped out. 

Their families should have been wiped out 
too, but the men had moved their women 
and children to hiding, in case they failed 
in battle. But now they put two and two 
together. The bombs and the looting bands 
were too closely connected to be accidental. 
In any case they had nothing left but them- 
selves and a few head of livestock. 

They’d started a desperate migration for 
some other isolated place where — they 
vowed — no hungry stranger would ever fail 
to be killed immediately. But their animals 
left a broad trail. They were sniped at be- 
cause the animals were food. They were am- 
bushed because they had women with them. 
Word seemed to pass in every direction ahead 
of them. Their progress became a running, 



hopeless fight. 

Their last animal had been lost four day* 
before. When Steve sighted their advance- 
guard — only three men and only one gun 
among them — they were at the limit of their 
endurance. 

When Steve held a council of war with 
them, the signs of their ordeal were plain. 

“We can write ourselves off as dead and 
sit down and die,” he told the men cynically. 
“Quite likely that will be the end of it, 
anyhow. But there’s a chance for us to do 
some damage first. And there’s been through 
all history an odd series of events that may 
be more promising than it sounds. Every- 
thing that’s ever turned up to harm humanity 
has ultimately been tamed and put to use. 

“Men were probably as afraid of fire, a 
million years ago, as wild animals are now. 
But they tamed it. Men were deadly afraid 
of gunpowder. It killed enough people! But 
they tamed it and used it for blasting coal 
and metal ores, and made roads and tunnels, 
and they converted cannon into internal 
combustion engines, and in the long run 
explosives did more good than the harm 
they’d caused. 

“Even lightning was terrible, once, until it 
was tamed and made electric lights and tele- 
vision and so on. Everything that ever killed 
men has sooner car later been tamed. But 
atom bombs have seemed different.” 

T HERE was a growling noise. For three 
hundred miles they’d fought their way 
through human beasts the atom bombs hoi 
made best able to survive. They hated the 
beasts, and they hated atom bombs and 
those who used them. 

“There’s just one chance, and it’s a slim 
one,” Steve said, more cynically than before. 
“Lucky Connors found something that atom 
bombs make, which may mean their taming if 
we can work it out.” 

He explained, as simply as he could, what 
the crater-stones were and what they did. 
He met blank incomprehension. He tried 
again, and ran against the same inability to 
understand. 

“They make accidents happen the way we 
want them to,” he said helplessly. “Look 
here! All of you take pencils, or get some 
charcoal from the fireplace. Each of you 
write down a number, without consulting 
anybody else. Any number. Up in the mil- 
lions if you Eke. I’ll use a crater-stone to 
make you happen, by accident, all to write 




THE LAWS 

the same number.” 

There was skepticism and impatience. But 
one man wrote, and another, and another. 
Then one man showed his number to an- 
other. It was 397546872. The second man 
displayed his. It was the same. A third man. 
A fourth. A fifth. 

But it seemed like a conjuring trick, of no 
importance. 

“Then we’ll go outside,” said Steve, when 
he saw their impatience, tinged with unease. 
“Somebody bring a bow and arrow.” 

He made a mark a good hundred yards 
away. Behind a tree. He had the bowman 
shoot over the tree. It hit the mark. Again 
and again and again. 

“Call it a lucky stone if you like,” said 
Steve angrily, when cold eyes turned toward 
him. “Go look around the fire where those 
looters were last night. Every bolt and arrow 
fired from the house hit one of them! There’ll 
be dead men down there, and you’ll be glad 
they’re dead. And there are other dead men 
In the brush, here and there.” 

Three of the men stayed, watching Steve 
dubiously while the others went down to 
see. There were shouts. The men downhill 
beckoned to those about the house. All went 
to look. One heavily bearded man stood 
clenching and unclenching his hands above 
a body. 

When Steve drew near, he turned and 
spoke in a choked voice. 

“This man killed my son in the fightin’ a 
week ago,” the farmer said. “I saw’t. I don’t 
know how you got him killed, whether by 
witchin’ or what, but I don’t care if the devil 
done it so it’s done! And after all, we’re alive 
because of you. We’ll listen again and try to 
understand, even if it’s witchin’.” 

There were eight bodies beside the bumed- 
out fire. Three of them had guns. Two had 
pistols. There was other booty. 

“Better go back to the house,” said Steve 
to Frances in a low tone. She hesitated, 
then walked to a discreet distance, where she 
waited. 

The slain were stripped. Clothes were 
precious. 

“They fought each other in the dark, too,” 
Steve observed coldly. “There should be 
some more bodies. We may pick up more 
guns. We’d better look.” 

They did look. They went back to the 
ruins of the generator plant and searched, 
and found nothing except a dagger which 
Steve picked up. Every additional weapon 



OF CHANCE 47 

was valuable. One farmer stayed close to 
Steve, as he threaded his way through the 
rubble. Frances followed and stood near a 
shattered fountain while the hunt was going 
on. She gave a sigh of relief when the ex- 
plorations were finished. 

Steve returned to the house with the men. 
They felt doggedly satisfied. Some were 
asking questions. Clumsy, groping questions. 
What Steve had to say in the way of explana- 
tion went counter to everything that had 
been their normal way of thought — as it had, 
in a sense, been unusual to him. 

But at least Steve’s methods, however in- 
explicable. passed the pragmatic test. They 
worked. There were nine new firearms in 
their possession. They credited the gain to 
Steve. And there were two men, in particu- 
lar, who pressed him with desperate queries 
such as men only ask when prepared to be- 
lieve anything if belief will allow them to 
hope. As they went into the house, Frances 
heard him say doubtfully: 

“Well try it and see.” 

They ate, mostly of fish. Afterward, Steve 
and the two men went off alone. Then the 
two men came back, borrowed extra car- 
tridges, and plunged into the woodland back 
along the line of their flight. And Steve 
stood frowning in a harassed way after them. 
“What is it, Steve?” Frances asked. 

“Two women and a couple of children 
whom everybody believes dead or worse,” 
he answered. “They must be hiding out 
somewhere back yonder. These men wanted 
to know if I could work a miracle. I said no. 
They asked if I could help get anybody who 
might be alive but separated from them, 
'found and brought back here. I said maybe.” 

F RANCES was puzzled. She looked at 
Steve. 

“What did you do?” she asked. 

“I just tried to find out what’s in the 
pattern of possible futures,” Steve explained. 
“I pulled that the two men should find the 
missing members of their party. The crater- 
stone warmed. It was possible, and it was 
sure. I pulled that they’d find them the first 
day. That wasn’t on the dice. The second 
day. It was. Then I tried this and that, try- 
ing to fumble out how they could find them, 
by whether the crater-stone warmed up or 
not. Actually, I was playing hot-and-cold, 
the kid’s game. They’ve gone off. And they’ll 
find two women and at least two kids and 
bring them back, and then they’ll think I’m a 




48 STARTLING STORIES 



spiritualist medium or something! Maybe 
they’ll want to build a church around me! 
And doggone it, I don’t like the idea of pull- 
ing off miracles and finding lost people and 
junk like that. It’s — phony!” 

“Then why not make an understandable 
contrivance that will do what the stones do, 
and explain how it works?” 

“If I use electricity, a spy will pick up the 
radiation,” said Steve bitterly. “If a spy 
doesn’t, a plane up in the stratosphere will! 
Electricity means civilization, and civiliza- 
tion means bombs. I’m going out of my head, 
Frances! Up to now, people have excluded 
chance from all scientific 'work. They had 
to! If your results could have come by 
accident, they were no good, because you 
couldn’t repeat them. But now we’ve only 
to ensure that chance can produce a given 
result to get it every time. I’ve got to experi- 
ment with this stuff, Frances. I’ve got to! 
But if I try anything at all I’ll bring a 
bomb.” 

The sixteen-year-old Bob came to him, 
bashfully but with his eyes alight 

“I can fix the dynamo in two days, sir,” he 
said triumphantly. “Oily two or three layers 
of wire were ruined. Shall I start?” 

“No, Bob,” said Steve gloomily. “I’m 
licked. We daren’t use the dynamo. It’s 
luck we never tried. But — look here! I feel 
sort of humble. I’m a trained physicist and 
my mind runs in a groove. I got out of it 
once, but apparently I’m back. You aren’t 
old enough to think in ruts, yet. Let me tell 
you my troubles. Ill see if you can suggest 
something.” 

Frances went way and left him talking to 
Bob, who was sixteen years old and had once 
made a television set which worked. Steve 
had diagnosed his difficulty quite clearly. He 
had been trained to think in a specific 
fashion, and the crater-stones called for a 
different sort of thinking altogether. 

All the experiments of physical research 
had always been designed to exclude, rigidly, 
the element of chance. Accident was anath- 
ema in a well-conducted physics laboratory. 
Even Steve’s painstaking inquiry into the 
paradox of the indeterminate had come about 
because physics, as an exact science, had 
reached a stage of delicate measurement in 
which indeterminacy — chance — turned up in 
spite of all efforts. 

Steve’s treatise had been begun, in fact, 
in the vague hope of finding some way to 
eliminate chance in the behavior of even 



small numbers of electrons or other particles. 

But the crater -stones did not eliminate 
chance. They controlled it. And Steve could 
not reserve his entire professional habit of 
thought overnight to take full advantage. 

So he talked to the boy, Bob, quite hum- 
bly, because the boy would understand more 
than most adults and might be able to do a 
mental about-face more quickly than Steve 
himself. 

Two hours later. Steve walked into the 
house where Frances helped a mother with 
a sick baby. He picked Frances up, lifted 
her off her feet, and kissed her exuberantly. 

“We’ve got it!” he told her explosively. 

While men and women stared at him 
blankly, he kissed Frances soundly again, 
and marched triumphantly out of the house 
once more. His voice rose out-of-doors, 
calling for the sixteen-year-old Bob. 



CHAPTER XI 
New Science 



~H~ ESS than two days later, Steve turned on 
MLd the electric lights in the house. An hour 
afterward, he had turned on the electric 
heating-units in ducts behind the walls, so 
that the house became warm and dry, and the 
slight mustiness of the air — as a result of 
the building having been so long untenanted 
and unaired — began to lessen. 

Before the day was over, he had drawn up 
plans for beds of humus in the attic up- 
, stairs. He would put lights and heating- 
elements in the attic and use it as a hot- 
house in which to grow food all winter. 

There would be roofed-over sheds in the 
nearby woods, built under cover of the green 
leaves, which by the time of bare branches 
would be indistinguishable from the ground 
around them. They also would be warmed 
and lighted and would grow food. There 
would be an underground passage from the 
house to the wood — dug as a ditch, at night, 
and roofed over as it was dug before dawn 
of every day so its construction could not be 
seen from aloft — which would prevent a 
trail from being made about the building. 

The boy Bob worked with absorption and 
intense authority, supervising all electrical 
work. The dynamo would not be used as a 
generator. An easier method had been 
found. 




THE LAWS 

Steve, himself, vanished from view. He 
had taken a small room for his own work, 
despite the crowding of the building by all 
the newcomers. In it he labored extrava- 
gantly with utterly improbable materials — 
stray nails from the burned-out dynamo- 
shed, and salvaged wire from the damaged 
dynamo, and even bottles from what had 
been the garbage-disposal area of the house’s 
former occupants. 

Time passed and his labors grew with 
them. He became bright-eyed and feverish. 
Sometimes he stopped and held his head 
in his hands. 

Frances heard him talking to Bob when — 
days later — she went to insist that he eat 
something. 

“Faraday founded a science in three days 
of experiment,” said Steve, “and Fleming 
remade a science when he stopped to notice 
what bread-mould had done before he 
heaved a tray of agar-agar into the trash- 
can. You and I, Bob, are trying to found 
an entire new civilization in a couple of 
weeks, and it’s just crazy enough to make 
my head ache from time to time. I could do 
with about a month’s sleep right now.” 

Frances produced a tray of food and in- 
sisted that he eat. 

“If food will keep me awake, I’ll eat any- 
thing,” said Steve dizzily. “By the way, how 
is the food situation?” 

“We’ll do,” said Frances evasively. 

He shook his head, as if to clear it, and 
looked at her sharply. 

“My dear, I think you’re lying. When 
did you eat last, and what was it?” 

He stormed when he found out that she 
had tried to give him all the food she would 
normally have, herself, in a day. It was 
inevitable, of course, that nearly thirty peo- 
ple encamped in the house made food sup- 
plies sh<?rt. There were fish in the. pond, to 
be sure. There were some rabbits and small 
game in the woods. And the women— after 
due scouting by the men — -did gather occa- 
sional mushrooms and hickory-nuts and 
other edible wild things. 

But there were not animals enough for the 
party to support itself by hunting, even if 
they’d had ammunition to spare, and there 
were no crops to be gleaned. Nothing had 
been planted anywhere this year, save in 
isolated communities like the one these folk 
had come from. 

“The answer is that I am an ass,” said 
Steve. “I’ve been doing research when I 



OF CHANCE 49 

should have been applying what I found 
out day before yesterday. I’ve been work- 
ing out schemes instead of keeping the pan- 
try filled. If Bob, here, will put together 
a few wires. . . .” 

He had worked too hard. As long as he 
kept going, he was all right, but once he 
stopped and tried to turn to something else, 
exhaustion overcame him. He tried to sketch 
what he had in mind, but he yawned uncon- 
trollably in the middle. But the boy Bob 
leaned over his shoulder. 

“I think I get it, sir,” he said anxiously. 
“Let me try making it?” 

“Go ahead, Bob. A-a-ugh! Put it together 
and I’ll charge the generator-wires with the 
crater-stone and we’ll have something to 
eat. ...” 

T HE last of his words slurred. His eyes 
closed. He was asleep. In his absorption 
in the experimental work in hand, he’d gone 
far beyond the stage of being worn out He 
slept like a log, and Frances watched jeal- 
ously over him, even when the boy came 
anxiously and would have waked him for 
additional needed directions. 

He slept for eighteen hours straight while 
Frances guarded his rest. But she had dozed 
off, herself, when he waked. She felt his 
eyes upon her, and started up. She smiled 
at him. 

“You want something, Steve?” 

He did not seem inclined to stir. 

“N-no,” he said slowly. “I’m rested now. 
I’ve been awake for some time. I’ve been 
watching you. You’ve had a rotten deal, 
Frances.” 

“I’m doing all right. Everything’s all right. 
You remember the baby that was sick? It 
played outdoors yesterday.” 

He shook his head. 

“I think I’m a nut. I drag you about the 
country until I find a place for you to stay 
in relative safety. Then I drag in thirty 
assorted people to increase your danger, and 
you go on short rations while I spend all my 
time puttering and seem to forget you. 

“Next you try to make me eat the food 
you should have yourself, and I raise Cain 
and go off to sleep in the middle of every- 
thing, still without seeing that you’ve enough 
to eat. And then you sit up by me in case 
I want something. You have had a rotten 
deal from me.” 

“I’d have been dead, and very horribly, but 
for you, Steve,” she said quietly. “I was 




50 STARTLING STORIES 



half -starved when I met you, and it’s only 
been the past couple of days that we’ve 
been on rations. And I’d been hiding from 
looters in sheds and under leaves and — 
everywhere, and now I live in a house which 
has electric lights and books, and there are 
people around me that I’m not afraid of. 
And sometimes you actually notice me, 
Steve.” She smiled at him, her eyes crinkled. 
“Actually, you sometimes notice me! I’ll 
do.” 

He sat up and grabbed at her arm. 

“Notice you? What the devil do you think 
I’m working for? Why do you think I want 
to have safety and civilization and deceny 
back in the world again?” 

“I couldn’t guess,” she said with an air 
of breathless interest. “Do tell me, Steve! 
Why?” 

He seized her in exasperation, and she 
smiled at him again, and he kissed her. And 
they sat on the floor together, with his arm 
about her shoulders, and she looked per- 
fectly contented. Even when, some ten 
minutes later, he was saying absorbedly: 

“The kid pointed out that extremely short 
waves won’t go around sharp corners and 
can’t travel through water. So we fixed 
our switches so they give off nothing but 
extremely short stuff when they are opened 
and closed, and surrounded them with water. 
Not too tricky, you notice. I can’t help 
thinking as I was trained to. The children 
in this gang will run rings around me as 
scientists when they’re a bit older, with the 
new stuff that’s bound to come.” 

Frances listened, but she looked most often 
at Steve’s hand, tightly holding her own. He 
went on zestfully: 

“With the trick of exploring the pattern 
of possible futures, and finding out what’s 
possible and what isn’t, it actually took me 
only two hours to work out a gadget to do 
everything the crater-stones will do. 

“I can put any amount of power into it. 
But I needed electricity to try it, and the 
dynamo was a wreck. So the kid came up 
with an idea. One of the most annoying 
effects of indeterminacy is the shot effect, the 
thermal noises you get in high-gain elec- 
tronic equipment.” 

Frances didn’t understand but she didn’t 
let Steve know it. 

“How can the difficulty be overcome?” she 
asked. 

“Free electrons, roaming around in a 
wire, by pure accident sometimes pile up at 



one end,” Steve went on. “When they do, 
that’s an electric current. The kid said 
those currents are accidents and could I 
make them when I wanted to. And that was 
all I needed. Of course I could! I took a 
bit of wire and used the cx - ater-stone. All 
the electrons in it could only move toward 
one end, as if Clerk Maxwell’s demons were 
on the job. Of course, that cooled off the 
wire. And of course it gave a current!” 

E LOOKED at her triumphantly. 

“Then I wondered if that accidental 
condition could be made permanent, and it 
could. After I’ve treated a bit of wire, the 
electrons can only travel in one direction in 
it, and so they do. They pile up, new free 
electrons form where they came from, and 
we have power, the wire gets cold and ab- 
sorbs more heat to produce more electricity, 
and it’s a D.C. generator with no moving 
parts, that needs no fuel, and that will keep 
on working till the cows come home. We’ll 
never worry about fuel any more. We can 
run machines and automobiles and ships and 
airplanes on heat we take out of the air. 
Sunpower, when you think of it. That’s a 
good first step toward a new civilization.” 
Frances smiled warmly at him. He freed 
her hand to gesticulate. 

“I was working then with electrons. I tried 
it next with molecules. They have random 
motions because of heat. It’s more pro- 
nounced in gases and liquids, but it’s always 
there. When I was able to make all the 
molecules in a glass of water try to move in 
the same direction at the same time, I knew 
I had the next big thing lined up. I was 
trying to fix some iron the same way when 
you came in to try to make me eat.” 

Then Steve stopped short and looked at 
her. His expression became one of intense 
self-disgust. 

“Lord! Frances! Here I’m talking rot in- 
stead of going after grub for you! Why do 
you stay here and listen, anyway?” 

“I thought,” said Frances ingenuously, 
“that maybe when you got through you might 
kiss me again.” 

They went out of the laboratory some ten 
mintues later, with Frances smiling content- 
edly and patting her hair back into place. 

“And we’re both hungry,” Steve said to 
her, marveling. “It must be love!” 

They were laughing when they went in 
search of Bob, the boy. He had labored 
magnificently, but his creation looked like 





THE LAWS OF CHANCE 51 



nothing that had ever been before on earth, 
or in the heavens above or the waters under 
the earth. It was an incredibly intricate 
arrangement of bits of second-hand wire 
and salvaged bottles from the former trash- 
dump. Some of the bottles were filled with 
liquid and had wires inserted in them, but 
others seemed completely empty save for 
wires which had no apparent purpose. 

“These are our jewels, I think,” said Steve. 
“I’ll check it over and get some of our 
whiskered allies to work it. Since Bob, 
here, made it, they may not think I’m a 
witch if it works. But they’ll keep him busy 
for the next month or so explaining it to 
them.” 

He verified the meanderings of wires 
which were definitely not in any circuit 
which could be classed as electronic. It 
was something completely new, and it looked 
insane. 

“A good job, Bob. Let’s show it to the 
others.” 

The boy gulped, and ran. In minutes the 
others came to see. The boy stood back, 
trembling with excitement. 

Steve smiled at the men who still regarded 
him with a mixture of faith and dark sus- 
picion. 

“This is a machine to cause accidental 
happenings,” he said. “Our young friend Bob 
made it. He’ll explain to you how it works. 
There are all sorts of accidents. Some are 
good ones and some are bad. This is sup- 
posed to cause good ones.” He pointed to the 
bearded man who had been first to say that 
even if Steve had defeated the late looters 
with the devil’s aid he was glad of it. “You, 
there! If you’11 take hold of those two han- 
dles and think of what we need to have 
happen, I believe you’ll get your wish.” 

The bearded man stepped forward. His 



face contorted with sudden terrific emotion. 
He held the handles. 

Nothing happened. 

Steve touched his shoulder and he stepped 
back. 

“I wished,” said the bearded man fiercely, 
“that every murderer and looter in the world 
should drop dead, and every man who had 
anything to do with the bombs!” 

“I’m afraid our gadget isn’t up to anything 
on so large a scale,” said Steve drily. “We’ll 
have to be a bit more modest. That couldn’t 
happen by accident. It couldn’t happen by 
chance.” 

The boy whispered to Steve. 

“But it works, sir! I tried it. I — pulled 
for it that some day I’ll know as much as 
you do, and the wires glowed!” 

S TEVE looked at him, and could make no 
comment. He turned to the other men. 
“Somebody pull for something that’s sim- 
ply improbable,” he suggested curtly. “I 
want you people to realize that this is simply 
machinery but that it does produce a defi- 
nite result.” 

A younger man took the two handles. One 
of the bottles with wires and liquid suddenly 
bubbled. The wire seemed to grow incan- 
descent under the liquid. It stayed that way. 
Another wire, exposed to air, glistened wet- 
ly. The wetness clouded. The wire covered 
with frost. Then, gradually, the incandes- 
cence died away. The young man, a little 
bit frightened, let go of the handles. 

“We’re all on short rations,” he explained 
apologetically. “I wished the snares we’ve 
got in the woods will get filled up so we’ll all 
have a good supper.” 

“That is what science is for!” said Steve 
approvingly. “Right now, anyhow. Let’s 

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12 STARTLING STORIES 



iee what we see.” 

An hour later the men began to come 
back from their round of the snares. They 
bad more than twenty rabbits, two ruffled 
grouse, and a partridge. Steve nodded in 
ratisfaction. 

“I guess we can keep game coming in to 
feed us,” he told Frances. “But we’ve got to 
be careful, at that. If there’s a migration 
of game this way, there’ll be people follow- 
ing it. We’ll have to go in for wild-fowl, 
instead of ground-game. Say, a dozen or so 
ducks or geese or whatnot to land on the 
pond each day. 

“Somehow too, we’ve got to get vegetables, 
and some iron and stuff to work with.” He 
sighed. “I’m not going to feel comfortable, 
though, until we’ve got some kind of a de- 
fense against atomic bombs and attacks by 
the guerillas who might be sent to hunt us 
down.” 

“I wish you had more time to be with me, 
Steve,” Frances said wistfully. 

“I wish that those two men who went off 
to hunt for the women would come back,” 
said Steve. “And Lucky would be handy to 
have around. I can cook up gadgets, Fran- 
ces, but I guess I’m not practical. Every- 
body’s been hungry because I wasn’t. And 
we’ve got to be practical. 

“The people with planes and bombs do 
know that something odd happened around 
here. Their man had reported it before I 
killed him. And it’s a fact that, if we’re 
let alone, sooner or later we’ll be dangerous. 
But right now they could crush us as we 
step upon ants.” 

There were thirty people in the house, of 
whom Steve and a sixteen-year-old boy 
alone could make a device which controlled 
chance, and therefore constituted the whole 
body of useful science left upon earth. 

The rest of the continent of North-America 
was a waste, roamed by ever-more-desper- 
ate looting bands who inevitably tore down 
any traces of civilization they came upon, 
guided by the spies of people who were 
resolved that America should become un- 
peopled save by savages. 

But the two men who had set out days 
before, came back that afternoon. They had 
two women and three small children with 
them. The women and the children were 
nearly half-starved. One of the women 
had been a prisoner of a small band of loot- 
ers, a fragment of the bands which had 
hunted the refugees across country. Her 



captors were now dead. The two men were 
filled with bitterest rage. The shorter of 
the men had four fresh scalps dangling on 
his belt. 

That was disturbing. Civilization could 
not be based on scalps. But as Steve was 
thinking it over in his mind, later on, there 
was a hail from the new-fallen night. 

Lucky Connors had come back. 



CHAPTER XII 

Ominous News 



TTERING a cry of delight Frances 
hugged Lucky and Steve found himself 
unexpectedly jealous. But Lucky put out 
his hand and grinned. 

“You’ been goin’ places, fella,” Lucky 
said. “You really got things done. Whew, 
electric lights! You got a whole tribe around 
you. You got plenty of grub?” 

“We’ll do,” said Steve. “I’ve been need- 
ing you, Lucky. I seem to be the absent- 
minded professor type. But there’s a kid 
here who used to play with television.” 

“Migosh!” said Lucky. “Stop him, fast! 
Those guys with planes and bombs can track 
down anything like that. Look!” 

He unslung a pack from his back and 
tumbled out a half dozen small flat objects. 

“These here are some kinda short-wave 
sets,” he said earnestly. “Spies for the guys 
with planes carry ’em. They can snot anv- 
thing that runs by electricity with ’em. They 
can talk with planes with ’em. And they 
can find each other and know each other 
with ’em. If there’s somebody playin’ with 
television around here he’d better quit right 
off!” 

Steve nodded. 

“We’re safe as far as that goes. I got one 
of these same things from a spy I killed. If 
you open them the wrong way they blow 
up, though.” 

Lucky grinned again. They were in the 
big room of the house with electric lights, 
but as there was a serious shortage of bulbs, 
a great fire was burning in the fireplace. The 
farmers, who now gave Steve great respect, 
had gathered to listen. Lucky seemed to be 
in fine fettle. 

“I got me a spy, early,” he said content- 
edly. “Remember I told you I was gonna 
hunt down one of the fellas who report to 





THE LAWS OF CHANCE 



the guys doin’ the bombin’s? And I said I 
was gonna make him. talk? When I left 
here, I pulled hard to meet one of those 
fellas. First day after I left, I struck on. 
south. Then west. I went on three days and 
never saw a livin’ soul. I didn’t feel agree- 
able, and maybe it was just as well, 

“On the fourth day I found a dead man, 
new-killed. He looked like he’d been eatin’ 
regular, so I hunted for a trail an’ went on 
after the folks who’d killed ’im. ’Bout 
nightfall I caught up with ’em, settin’ 
around a fire. I went in to the fire an’ says, 
‘I’m Lucky Connors and I’m a gamblin’ 
fool. I got a rifle I’ll gamble against grub 
or what have you, with y’own dice.’ That 
kinda broke the ice.” 

Steve grimaced. With a crater-stone, con- 
trolling chance, Lucky Connors could not 
lose shooting crap unless he wanted to, no 
matter what dice he rolled. 

“Them that woulda killed me for the rifle, 
figured it’d be more fun to roll me for it,” 
said Lucky. “But I cleaned up the camp, usin’ 
their own dice, and some of them was the 
crookedest dice I ever did see! Then I ate 
hearty and said, ‘I’m Lucky Connors, fellas, 
and I can’t carry all this stuff I won. You 
fellas take it back and let me in on the 
party, whatever it is.’ And I set back and 
waited for ’em to call the play. But I was 
in.” 

Lucky paused and grinned. 

“They coulda killed me, but every one of 
’em wanted to find out how I made their own 
dice misbehave,” he went on. “So we set 
around cordial and they told me what they 
were aimin’ for. They’d heard there was a 
farm that hadn’t been raided and there was 
a coupla women and plenty of grub there, so 
they were goin’ over to see. So I joined ’em 
for the raid, and I pulled for the folks we 
were goin’ after to light out before we got 
there.” 

He pulled forth a pipe and tobacco. He 
filled and lighted his pipe. The watching 
men stirred hungrily. 

“Smoke up on me,” Lucky said hospitably. 
“I got some more.” 

He tossed a bulging bag to the nearest 
man. It went from hand to hand. Some of 
the men had not smelled tobacco for weeks. 

“They’d cleared out, all right, but we 
looted the place of grub,” he added. “We 
burned the house, too, and set fire to the 
crops in the field. It was the boss of the 
gang who done that. That fella kinda — uh — 



S3 

int’rested me. How’d he know about a farm 
that hadn’t been raided, and why’d he want 
to burn crops that coulda been come back 
for after they was ripe?” 

T HE atmosphere was not cordial. These 
men were farmers, too, and half their 
number had been killed by looters exactly 
like those Lucky said he’d joined. 

“I kinda figured things out,” said Lucky. 
“If I was right, he’d have some kinda report 
to make, that night. So I didn’t go off to 
sleep like the others. I hid out an’ watched. 
And when everybody else was snorin’, the 
boss of the gang he walked off beyond the 
fire, and he listened awhile, and he went on 
a ways farther, and then he started mutter- 
in’ like he was mutterin’ to himself. 

“I let him talk himself out, and when he 
quit and started back to the fire I jumped 
’im. Knocked him cold. I tied him up an’ 
heaved him on my back and carried him till 
I was tired. Then I made sure he was tied 
tight and went to sleep.” 

Steve felt a light touch against his shoul- 
der. It was Frances, sitting on the floor be- 
side him to listen to Lucky. She leaned 
comfortably, unconsciously, against Steve. 
Any trace of jealousy he might have felt 
evaporated on the instant. 

“Come mornin’ I woke up with a shot-gun 
in my middle. There was a man and two 
women there, and the man was ready to 
blow me to here-and-gone. He was the 
farmer that we’d burned his house and 
crops. He’d watched us loot and burn his 
place. He’d have shot me whilst I was 
asleep, only he recognized the man I was 
carryin’ all tied up as the guy who’d fired 
his wheatfield. So he was curious to know 
what it was all about, and he meant to 
ask me before he killed me. I told him.” 
Lucky grinned and puffed on his pipe. 
He enjoyed an audience, did Lucky. A little 
while before, most of his present hearers had 
been favorably impressed by his present 
of tobacco, and then turned to instinctive 
hatred by his narration of a share in a 
guerilla raid. Now they wavered. They did 
not know what to think. And Lucky enjoyed 
their indecision. 

“That guerilla boss, he sure got eloquent. 
I never heard any man beg for his life so 
hard. So the farmer, he took my word for 
what I was after — the evidence was pretty 
good — and we staked that guerilla boss out 
and we built a fire and begun to ask him 




64 STARTLING STORIES 



questions. When he started lyin’ we stripped 
him — that was when I found the first one 
of the dinguses, Steve — and got some brands 
ready, and then he told the truth.” 

The eyes of the refugees burned, now. 
They no longer hated Lucky. They waited 
hungrily to hear of torture. 

“What nationality was he, Lucky,” Steve 
said suddenly. “What language did he speak 
into that transmitter?” 

“Huh!” said Lucky scornfully. “He was 
nothin’ but a lowdown looter! He talked 
American same as you and me. He’d been 
bossin’ a kinda small gang, lootin’ and burn- 
in’ and killin’, and fellas would turn up and 
join and drop out again, and he wasn’t 
makin’ out so good. But a fella turned up 
and offered confidential to give him guns and 
whisky to build his gang up with if he’d 
take tips by short-wave radio and report 
what he seen and done.” 

Lucky turned and gave Steve a quick 
glance. 

“You and me, Steve, woulda shot that guy 
for a spy, but this boss guerilla took him 
up. And the fella gave him a short-wave 
set and told him how to use it — but he 
warned him not to open it — and sure enough, 
next night the short-wave set told him 
where to find a cache of whisky and a few 
guns, and he began to prosper. He had 
thirty— forty men under him when I joined 
up. Mostly they were raidin’ farms that the 
short-wave told him about, burnin’ ’em and 
gettin’ the grub and killin’ the people just 
for the deviltry of it.” 

He paused. 

“It took us a right long time to get all 
the details outa him,” he added drily. “Once 
we had to start a little bit of fire on his 
middle. But he told us everything he knew, 
and I treated him fair.” His tone was vir- 
tuous. “I done just like I promised I v, ould, 
if he told me everything he knew without 
boldin’ back none.” 

A bearded man leaned forward, his eyes 
burning. 

“You didn’t let him go, man!” 

“Shucks, no!” said Lucky in surprise. 
“But I kept to my promise. The farmer want- 
ed to do it, so I let him, but that fella got 
just what I promised him — killed quick, 
with one shot. It took a lotta argument to 
get him to be satisfied with that, but I — 
uh — persuaded him.” Lucky’s eyes glowed 
with a satisfaction that comes when a long 
pent-up hatred is released by brutal revenge. 



F RANCES’ hand, in Steve’s, tightened 
convulsively. Steve made no move. 
There could be no ethics in a war such as 
was now being fought. 

“And after that, Lucky?” Steve said even- 
ly. “That’s only one transmitter. Here are 
a half dozen.” 

“Oh, we found out how to get ’em from 
him. There’s other fellas like him that got 
transmitters, and there’s fellas that pass ’em 
out. The ones who pass ’em out are from the 
folks with planes and bombs. One of those 
dials is for locatin’ another fella who’s got 
one. It’s so they can join up and know each 
other and not waste time fightin’ each other. 
He explained all about it. So the farmer 
and me, we used that one. We set it to make 
a kinda call, like he told us how, and we set 
and waited. Two-three days later some 
fellas come by and one of ’em told the others 
to go on ahead while he set down. When his 
fellas were outa sight, he came straight 
toward our sendin’ set. I killed him.” 
Lucky's air was tranquil; his tone con- 
versational. 

“That fella had two pistols and more 
ammunition than you’d think one man could 
carry! And he had another set just like 
the one I had. I give it to the farmer and 
he said he was gonna go in the business of 
sendin’ out calls for fellas with those sets. 
They’d always arrange to meet him quiet— 
naturally. And it’d be profitable work, when 
you think of it. Anybody hidin’ out would 
give a lotta grub for a gun or pistol and some 
shells, and him and the two women, all 
havin’ guns, could take care of themselves 
easy. 

“Him and the women went off to where 
he said he knew there was another fella 
hidin’ out. He said he guessed he’d set his 
friend up in the business too, if it turned out 
good. In fact, he might set up several fellas, 
killin’ off men with sendin’ sets that talk 
with the folks that have planes an’ bombs. 

"So I arranged a recognition-signal that 
everybody in that business would use to 
know everybody else, and we parted. A right 
nice fella, that farmer. He said he hoped 
I’d come to see him some time if things ever 
got better and he got his house built back 
up again.” 

Lucky seemed to consider his story end- 
ed. He puffed on his pipe and grinned at his 
audience. 

"That still accounts for only two sets,” 
said Steve. “And you’ve got a half dozen.” 




THE LAWS OF CHANCE 55 



“Yeah,” said Lucky. “It was a kinda in- 
terestin’ business. And it’s surprisin’ how 
many decent folks there are around, even 
yet Hidin’ out, all of ’em, and half- starved, 
most of ’em. 

“But I set three-four of ’em up in busi- 
ness, and they’re kinda gettin’ a little con- 
fidence. They’re even darin’ to get in touch 
with each other. I told ’em it was ploughed 
fields that tip off the planes, and the planes 
tip off the guerillas, so they oughta make 
out better. 

“They’ll plant stuff in little patches. No 
furrows. No neat fields. That’ll help a lot, 
all by itself. And they’ll pass on the word. 
It's bound to spread, when all the sendin’ 
sets in this locality get wiped out and the 
fellas that are huntin’ ’em have to go travel- 
in’ to stay in business.” 

There was a deeply satisfied silence all 
around the room. The men who had suffered 
so horribly from guerillas had, at last, the 
satisfaction of knowing that guerillas were 
being killed. That spies were being hunted. 
That at least a small dent had been made in 
the disaster that had befallen civilization. 

There was still no safety for them, how- 
ever. There was still no real reason to hope. 
Their food depended upon the operation of a 
device to control chance, which they did 
not understand and which instinct forbade 
them fully to believe in. And they were 
definitely, terribly vulnerable. 

This meant not only against guerillas and 
bandit gangs, armed and directed from the 
planes which could drop bombs. They could 
be blasted at any instant of any day or night 
if the folk who had destroyed civilization 
heard so much as a whisper of a suspicion 
that they clung to anything — those folk who 
had been doomed to die. 

And there was worse, which they did not 
know. When the house was filled with the 
minor turmoil of people finding their rest- 
ing-places for the night in so crowded a 
menage, Lucky Connors plucked at Steve’s 
sleeve and beckoned with his head. Steve 
followed him out of doors. 

“Frances looks okay, fella,” said Lucky. 

“I think she is,” said Steve. “I hope so, 
anyhow.” 

"Yeah.” Lucky was silent for a moment. 
“She — uh — understood why I went off?” 

“Yes,” said Steve uncomfortably. 

There was a pause. Then Lucky shrugged. 
He said in a different tone: 

“Things are cornin’ to a head, fella. On 



my way back here I picked off one last 
fella with a sendin’ set. He and his gang 
seemed to be headed this way. It worried 
me. I — uh — made him talk. I guess he figured 
I was somebody doublecrossin’ the fellas 
with planes and bombs. Anyhow, he’d been 
told to hunt up this house and find out what 
was goin’ on here. 

Steve frowned. “Here, eh? That’s bad. 
What were his instructions, Lucky?” 

“If it was guerillas like his outfit, okay — 
he’d get paid off in whisky and grub for 
findin’ it out,” Lucky answered. “If it 
wasn’t, he was to report that, after wipin’ 
everybody out if he could. He ain’t goin’ 
to report anything. I don’t know if his gang 
will come on here or not. But when he don’t 
report, somethin’s goin’ to happen! The 
folks who smashed up this whole country 
are interested in us. They know that some- 
thin’s wrong somewheres, with all their 
spies vanishin’ like they been doin’. They’re 
goin’ to tighten up all around. They’re pick- 
in’ on this place to start. What are we gonna 
do about it?” 

Steve took a deep breath. 

“I guess we’ll have to fight,” he said 
somberly. “There’s nothing else to do. You 
know, it would be interesting to know who 
they are or where they are or what the devil 
we can do about them. I feel like a gnat 
trying to start a fight with a locomotive.” 



CHAPTER XIII 
Enemy Bombs 



K NOWING the extent of the danger 
which threatened, Steve made no pre- 
tense of going to sleep that night. Followed 
by Lucky Connors, he repaired to the room 
he’d set aside as a laboratory, and resumed 
his labors. But this time he had very spe- 
cific objectives. Lucky Connors couldn’t 
be of much help; he merely sat on a bench 
and watched Steve. And Steve’s system of 
work seemed lunacy, at that. 

Steve took one of the six child’s copy- 
books and wrote in it. Then he took the 
handles of Bob’s elaborate apparatus of 
wires and stray objects, and stood frowning 
for an instant. Nothing happened. He 
crossed out what he had written and wrote 
something else. He held the two handles 
again. The process went on and on. After 




M STARTLING STORIES 



nearly an hour, two wires in a bottle of 
clear liquid glowed incandescent, and a 
bare wire turned white with frost. 

“That helps,” said Steve. He surveyed 
what he had written and did not cross it out. 
“I’m playing hot-and-cold, Lucky. 11118 thing 
does the same things the crater-stones do, 
and I’m trying to find a way to survive, in 
the possible futures that lie ahead. The cra- 
ter-stones get hot when they work. This 
thing makes those two wires glow. It gets 
its energy from the wire that turns white, 
changing its contained heat into electricity 
and dropping away down in temperature in 
the process.” 

“Whatcha tryin’ to do, Steve?” asked 
Lucky, who obviously was puzzled. 

“Right now I’m pulling for a way to make 
a record of a thought-pattern, so it can keep 
on pulling for something even when my 
mind gets tired,” Steve answered. “Nobody 
can hold a thought more than a second or 
two without some change. In the old days 
we had gadgets that did everything but 
think. I’ve got to make one that will wish!” 

Lucky shook his head. 

“Too deep for me,” he admitted. “Way 
over my head.” 

“I’m playing hot-and-cold,” explained 
Steve. “You remember how I found out this 
house was still standing before I saw it? 
I’m doing the same thing now. I pulled 
for it, just now, that I’d find a way to make 
a thought-record on iron. The gadget didn’t 
light up. So it wasn’t in a possible future 
that I could make a thought-record on iron. 
I went on, pulling for every possible mate- 
rial at hand. It just lighted up on protein. 

“It is possible, in the future, to make a 
thought-record on some sort of protein. Now 
I’ve got to find out what kind and how. 
When I get close to what I want, I’m hot 
and this gadget works. When I’m not, I’m 
cold and nothing happens. It’s a wacky way 
to do research, but it’s fast. I wish I were 
cleverer, though. I might be able to make 
it a game of ten questions and get my an- 
swers in a real hurry!” 

He wrote in the copybook and held the 
handles, frowning. Nothing happened. He 
crossed out the writing and wrote something 
else. Nothing happened. He crossed out and 
wrote, and crossed out and wrote. Lucky 
watched for a long, long time. Presently he 
yawned. Ultimately he dozed off. 

He woke, cramped, and Steve was still 
busy with the same absurd routine. It 



seemed to have no relationship at all to the 
situation facing him and all the rest of the 
world. It seemed a dreary and useless rig- 
marole, while the situation was desperate 
and apparently irremediable. The whole 
earth had exploded in a welter of destruc- 
tion, in which cities vanished in the blue- 
white glare of atomic explosions. 

Nobody knew who had started the destruc- 
tion. No nation knew what other waged 
war against it. 

In one sense it was not war at all, but a 
series of international assassinations in 
which all destruction was done anonymously 
and every nation cried fiercely that it was 
attacked and no nation admitted attacking. 
Now the whole earth was pock-marked with 
glass-lined craters where cities had been, 
and if any victorious nation actually sur- 
vived, it was only after such destruction as 
no vanquished nation had ever before en- 
dured. 

But some nation did survive more nearly 
than the rest. There were some folk who 
still had planes and bombs. They had arms 
they could give to guerillas to complete the 
ruin of a shattered America. 

They had microwave communication sets 
with which to guide those bandit allies in 
the reduction of America to sheer savagery. 
They had monster aircraft which flew in the 
upper stratosphere. And unquestionably 
they had bases in which the arms and bombs 
were stored and the aircraft serviced, and 
from which the organized production of 
chaos was controlled. They had spies, who 
must number in the thousands. 

Their bombing and fighter forces must be 
huge. Their technicaLfacilities and resources 
must be on a relatively gigantic scale, com- 
pared to one small group of people, some 
thirty in number and with exactly one weary 
physicist among them, who could marshal 
only a dozen or so firearms and a single 
contrivance of salvaged copper wire and 
reclaimed bottles and clumsily straightened 
nails. No self-respecting junk-yard would 
have given room to the equipment in Steve’s 
laboratory. But it was all he had, and he 
worked it grimly. With it he fumbled incal- 
culable possible futures for a path to safety. 
Now and again two wires glowed in a bot- 
tle. They were the markers on the path. 

When red dawn came he still worked, 
and in the same way. Scribble in a book. 
Hold two handles and think — cross out the 
scribble and scribble again. Hold two 




THE LAWS OF CHANCE 57 



handles. 

The strain was monstrous. Such mental 
effort was much worse than any physical la- 
bor could have been. But he went on like 
an automaton until the sun was clear of the 
horizon and climbing higher yet. Then, 
suddenly, the wires in the glass bottle glowed 
yet again. When they did, he dropped his 
hands in a gesture of wornout completion. 

But he could not rest, even yet He had 
to make sketches of the new circuits, with 
the materials specified and all connections 
indicated. And then he had to set to work 
to make them. 

When the sound of stirrings began in the 
house, he stopped and hunted up the six- 
teen-year-old Bob. He handed over the 
sketches for two devices and dully explained 
such details as the sketches did not show. 

The boy scanned them eagerly and set to 
work at once. And Steve went back to the 
making of the third gadget — and fell into the 
numbed sleep of mental exhaustion before it 
was quite finished. 

T IME passed. Off somewhere a dozen 
miles away, a band of guerillas woke in 
quarrelsome mood. Their leader had van- 
ished. Because of his absence they’d drunk 
up the whisky he occasionally produced as 
if by magic, and had fought each other 
blindly. 

This morning there were three dead men 
in camp, and still no leader. 

They argued in a sultry fashion while they 
ate what food remained. They had no plans. 
They only knew that their leader had in- 
tended to examine a house a dozen miles 
away, a house which might be the head- 
quarters of a rival band, or which might be 
the hideout of folk who could be robbed. 

In either case it was a destination. Rival 
guerillas could be joined, most likely. Refu- 
gees could be killed, quite certainly, and 
refugees usually had some women with them. 

As the morning wore on they quarrel- 
somely agreed to carry on. At about noon 
they began a shambling march toward the 
house, bunched and careless and pettish. 
They did not take care to stay among trees. 
Where they came to weed-grown fields they 
crossed them instead of skirting the edges. 

At the house, the boy worked feverishly, 
and two intricate, lunatic agglomerations of 
metal scraps and oddments grew to comple- 
tion under his hands. He went to hunt up 
Steve. He found Steve just desperately awak- 



ing and going on desperately with his part 
of the task. 

Outside, Lucky fretted because there was 
no sign of Steve. Frances fiercely tried to 
stop him from going into the laboratory. 

“If he fell asleep, let him!” she protested. 
“He works all the time, Lucky. He never 
rests.” 

“But there’s a lot that’s due to happen to- 
day,” Lucky said uneasily. “There’s a gang 
cornin’ this way and all.” 

“You’re here,” said Frances. “You’ve got 
a crater-stone. You’ll do something about 
it.” 

“Shucks!” said Lucky. “You think I’m a 
friend of yours, don’t you? Well then, let 
me be a friend of yours! There’s big doin’s 
on the way. I don’t know how to handle 
’em. Your friend Steve does — or he seemed 
to think so, anyway. I’m goin’ to call him. 
Things need doin’.” 

He knocked vigorously on the door of the 
laboratory. 

“Rise and shine, fella!” he called. “What 
do we do?” 

Steve came out of the laboratory, carrying 
the most improbable of freakish creations 
under his arm, while the boy Bob went on 
anxiously ahead to where he had assembled 
two more. 

“Come along,” said Steve. “We’ve got to 
mount this stuff outdoors.” 

He led the way up the hillside behind the 
house, where the boy was at work bracing 
an absurdity upright. One of the two things 
he had made was merely meaningless tan- 
gles of wire and bottles on a bit of charred 
board. The one he braced so carefully had 
been built around a section of three-inch 
sapling, which rested in a forked stick on two 
scorched, approximately straightened nails. 
It could be aimed like a gun. 

“These are finished, sir, like I told you,” 
the boy told Steve worshipfully. “I don’t 
get what they’ll do, though.” 

S TEVE put his own device down. He be- 
gan to check the ones the boy had made. 
“They’ll all hook together,” he said. “The 
one I just finished is a thought-record dinkus. 
It’ll hold a wish or a thought or a condition 
to be hooked into the others. It has to work, 
because I pulled that it would and it was in 
the pattern of possible events. That one — ” 
he pointed to the section of sapling in the 
forked stick. “That’s a hypothetical probe. 
It’s like radar, in a way, but it can handle 




58 STARTLING STORIES 



the output of the other, which is a generator- 
maker. You know how we make our elec- 
tricity, Lucky?” 

Lucky shook his head. 

“We enhance thermal noises,” said Steve, 
still checking the Goldbergian assemblages 
of odd parts. “Shot effects, you know. 
They’re natural, spasmodic currents in all 
bits of metal. They’re accidental. So since 
we can control accidents, we can make 
them happen constantly and much stronger 
than in nature. 

“We make all the free electrons travel one 
way and that cools off the metal and pro- 
duces current, and the cooling absorbs more 
heat to make more current. We can make 
that action permanent, and it gives up all the 
power we need. This gadget will make it 
happen at a distance, but the effect will be 
only temporary.” 

“You said this was a hypo — hypo — ” Bob 
said unhappily. 

Steve untwisted one connection the boy 
had made, and twisted it in another place. 

“You did good work, Bob. A hypothetical 
probe ought to be a variation on the way 
we’ve been finding out things. Up to now 
we’ve been pulling for something to happen, 
and if the crater-stone or the thing you made 
for me worked, we’d know it would happen. 
But this is a probe. It doesn’t say, ‘I wish 
this to happen when I do so-and-so.’ It 
says, ‘If I did so and so, would this happen?’ 

“Here! It looks all right. I’ll try it. I 
hook in the thought-record— so, to ask the 
question, ‘If I went along the line the probe 
points, would I see a plane?’ We can’t go 
straight up, you know, so it has to be hypo- 
thetical. 

“With a crater-stone, Lucky, we’d get no 
answer. Finding a plane by going straight 
up wouldn’t be in the pattern of possible 
events because we can’t go straight up. 
But it’s in the pattern of ascertainable facts, 
so this thing ought to work.” 

He swung the block of wood skyward. 
Wires glowed suddenly. He stopped moving 
the device. 

“There’s a plane up there,” he said quietly. 
“The thing works like radar. Yes, there’s 
a plane up there!” 

Lucky heard a distant screaming sound. 
Far away, black smoke mushroomed up- 
ward in a swift-moving, billowing mass. 
There was a second distant eruption. A 
third and fourth and fifth. Then the con- 
cussion-wave and the sound of the first 



explosion arrived simultaneously. 

Leaves overhead jerked spasmodically. 

The sound of the first explosion was a 
crushing roar. The second sound came, and 
the third and fourth and fifth. Each was 
louder than the one before. Each was nearer. 

“Hey!” said Lucky in a queer voice. 
“They’re cornin’ closer!” 

Steve’s hands moved swiftly, with incredi- 
ble speed. He was making connections with 
his fingers. Bits of wire tore the flesh and 
blood spurted, but he paid no heed. 

“We’re going to be bombed,” he said with 
savage brevity. 

Smoke spurted from twin explosions two 
miles away, then from three more, a mile 
and a half off. A bombing pattern was 
being established. Everything within an 
area, four miles long and two miles wide 
would be obliterated. But it had been ex- 
tended a little because a hand of moving 
figures had been sighted from above. 

They were, of course, the quarrelling, 
leaderless guerillas whose leader had van- 
ished the day before. They moved toward 
a spot where mysterious events had been 
reported. The guerillas made no reply to 
microwave signals sent down to them. There- 
fore they seemed a part of the mystery, per- 
haps the occupants of the house, and they 
were bombed. 

Then the pattern of bombs moved toward 
the house, faster than any human being 
could flee. A bomb went off a mile away, 
and then two others flanking it. The con- 
cussion-wave staggered Steve. But he said 
harshly: 

“Got it!” 

He twitched the last two wires together. 
Other wires, bare wires, frosted suddenly 
as their internal heat became a surge of elec- 
tricity and they drew more heat from the air 
around them. Two little wires in a bottle 
glowed brightly. 

Then the sky cracked open. Wide! 



CHAPTER XIV 
War by Science 



C ONCEALING leaves were blown from 
the trees by the violence of the ex- 
plosion. A bare half-dozen panes of glass, 
left in the house, splintered into fragments. 
Men reeled from the shock of the blast over- 




THE LAWS OF CHANCE 59 



head. The world was filled with thunderous 
bellowing tumult which was the sound- 
wave of detonations overhead. 

Its echoes and reechoes rolled and rever- 
berated among the hills. 

The noise died away, grumbling in the 
distance. Birds — at first paralyzed by fright 
— flapped and squeaked among the branches, 
and then took to wing in panic-stricken 
flight 

Almost directly above the house, some 
four thousand feet up, there was a mon- 
strous, globular mass of black smoke. It 
writhed within itself. But a wind shifted 
it away, leaving streamers of sooty vapor be- 
hind. 

And then, very high indeed, there could 
be seen another globe of black the size of a 
football. That was probably fifteen thou- 
sand feet up. Beyond it there was another 
at a likely twenty-five thousand feet, the 
size of a pea, and possibly others higher 
still. They were bombs which had detonated 
as they fell. 

There was silence for a brief time only. 
Women began to call shrilly to their chil- 
dren, as if a mother’s arms could protect 
the children from bombs. One woman sobbed 
throatily. Lucky Connors stared up, his 
face gone white and drawn. The boy Bob 
also gazed upward with awe-struck, shining 
eyes. And Frances looked at Steve with the 
luminous expression of infinite pride a 
woman displays when her man has done 
something remarkable. 

Steve set his lips. 

“I guess that’s that. They’ll send over an 
atomic bomb next. Here! Where’s some 
extra wire? We’ve got to put a wide-angle 
extension on that probe! It’s got to work like 
a fish-eye lens!” 

He snatched up scraps of extra wire. He 
began to form a reflector — radar-fashion — 
for the end of the apparatus made in the 
sapling-trunk. 

“I can do that, sir,” the boy said quickly. 
“Like a one-eighty beam reflector, two 
ways?” 

Steve nodded. He turned feverishly to the 
other maze-like masses of wiring. 

“Got to cancel that thought-record and 
make another,” he muttered. “There’s not 
much time.” 

His fingers bled. He shook them impa- 
tiently. He worked — he nodded to the boy. 
He fitted the newly-formed shape of wire 
to the end of the thing he had called a probe. 



He fastened it in place and aimed the sap- 
ling trunk skyward. 

“Now we’ll see what turns up. They 
should guess what’s happened,” 

It was broad daylight, just past noon. But 
at that instant there was a flare of light 
at the very horizon which was brighter 
than the sun itself. It was monstrous in size. 
It was as if, for the fraction of a second, the 
sun had been brought terribly close to earth 
and had poured out a monstrous, radiant 
heat. Then the light winked out. The heat 
ceased. There was nothing where the light 
had been. 

Steve’s tensed body went lax with relief. 

“That did it, all right!” he said shakily. 
“That was an atom bomb going off beyond 
the atmosphere. They must have learned 
what happened to their bombers and started 
a rocket for us as soon as they could aim it.” 

Then something made a shrill whistling 
noise overhead, and it rose in pitch and rose 
in pitch, and hit heavily into a hillside two 
miles off. It did not explode. Nothing at all 
happened. 

“That would be a bombing plane, I guess,” 
said Steve as shakily as before. “It took all 
that time to fall.” 

Other shrill whistlings came to the ears, 
two and three at the same instant. They 
sounded from every side, but every one of 
them ended in dull impacts. Some were far, 
far away. There must have been a dozen 
in all. 

Frances’ eyes were frightened. 

“There was a fleet of planes overhead — to 
bomb us! And — and — ” She stared at Steve. 

“And they ain’t there any more,” said 
Lucky. He swallowed. “I never been so 
scared since I got my luck. That was a 
atom bomb, fella?” 

A NOTHER lurid monstrous flare blos- 
somed on the horizon. Lucky flinched. 
“Yeah,” Lucky continued, answering his 
own question. “And there was another one. 
And another!” 

A third instantaneous, weirdly silent flare 
came as bright as the sun itself and many 
times larger. Three atom bombs had ex- 
ploded in empty space as they rose curving 
from below the horizon to fall upon people 
who dared to resist chaos. 

Steve sat down suddenly and put his head 
in his hands. 

But Bob, the sixteen-year-old, spoke rapt- 

ly. 




m STARTLING STORIES 



“I got it!” he cried. “Golly, I got it! He 
hooked on a generator-maker circuit, so 
the probe threw a beam that made genera- 
tors outa every piece of metal it hit. Every 
one! The bombs that were failin’ were turned 
into generators. The different pieces arched 
where they were close together. They heated 
up thin places in the fuse. They burned 
into the detonator and they set it off. And 
they exploded, every one! 

“Next, the planes — they got to be thou- 
sands of generators all hooked together, 
every piece spittin’ blue-white fire. Every 
wire to every instrument and every control 
became charged and started pourin’ juice 
into everything all at once! Every control 
burned out! Every motor jammed! 

“Where the ends of every bit of metal 
wasn’t spittin’ electric arcs, it was gettin’ cold 
as liquid air, and brittle, with no strength to 
it. It’d break, then — Oh-h-h! I got it! I got 
it!” 

Steve looked up. Frances gazed at him, 
wide-eyed. He lifted himself rather heavily 
to his feet. He put his arm around her. He 
opened his mouth, and closed it. 

“Let’s get something to eat,” he said at 
last. “We’re safe now for a while, but we 
can’t stop with being safe! We’ve got to fix 
these people so they can’t do any more 
damage, and then I guess we can start getting 
civilized once more.” 

He kissed her almost absent-mindedly as 
he walked toward the house with his arm 
around her waist. 

The refugees were shaken and scared, but 
also they were savagely triumphant. Food 
for Steve was handed to Frances to serve 
him, but most of the people who now re- 
lied on him were too much in awe to ask 
questions. They clustered around the boy, 
who was one of their number. He made 
voluble explanations, his eyes shining. There 
was the probe, which was simply a varia- 
tion on the apparatus which acted as an 
artificial crater-stone. 

To get information from that apparatus 
or from the crater-stone, one used it to 
explore possible futures, automatically 
causing a change in the probability of future 
events. But the probe explored the factual 
present, with no effect upon probability in 
itself. It worked like an infinitely superior 
radar. It could be adjusted to hunt for any- 
thing. Anything at all. The generator-maker 
was actually a more effective weapon than 
the atomic bomb, for defense. 



If every separate bit of metal in a complex 
bit of apparatus — such as a bomb-fuse or a 
bombing plane — became separately charged 
with high-voltage electricity with plenty of 
amperage behind it, that apparatus would be 
destroyed. 

The generator-making field created just 
such a condition when it was in action. It 
was rather as if a beam of magnetism could 
be projected, to make temporary tiny mag- 
nets of every sheet and rivet and wire in an 
aircraft, with all the north and south poles 
emitting electric arcs. And where the poles 
were far apart, the middle dropping to the 
temperature of liquid helium, when no metal 
has either strength or elasticity. 

The third piece of apparatus simply con- 
trolled the other two, but no atom bomb 
could penetrate such a defense, nor could an 
atom bomb provide a defense against it. 

And the three devices were startlingly 
simple, when the functions of which they 
were capable were considered. A civilization 
based upon controlled chance would not 
merely be one in which good luck was uni- 
versal. It would be one in which there could 
never be danger from atomic bombs. 

Steve called a council of war that after- 
noon, The deliberations were interrupted, 
once, by a drum-fire of distant detonations. 
A sentry, outside, gave the clue. When the 
first boomings sounded, he’d whirled to look. 
And he saw smoke-puffs just over the edge 
of far-distant hills. As he stared, infinitely 
tiny specks darted over those same hills and 
instantly exploded. 

“Ground-level planes,” said Lucky, wise- 
ly. “Tryin’ to sneak up at treetop level In 
the last war, the early radars wouldn’t work 
except on high-level stuff. But these fellas 
can come up behind hills, and when they 
come over ’em, the dinkuses mess ’em up.” 

A THOUGHT had occurred to Steve. His 
eyes narrowed. 

“They might try ground troops, too, but 
I can change the thought-record to take 
care of that, too,” he said. “The thing is 
that they’re going to keep on trying to get 
us. Yet I doubt that they’ll anticipate an 
attack from us very soon. They couldn’t 
possibly detect the stuff we’re using, so they 
probably think we’ve got radar and power- 
beams with a couple of hundred thousand 
horsepower in them. That sort of stuff 
wouldn’t be portable. They’ll expect us to 




THE LAWS OF CHANCE 61 



stay on the defensive and try to build up 
what they think we’ve got. So we’ll attack 
them before they have a chance to figure 
things out.” 

Frances looked anxious. 

“What do you mean to do?” she asked. 

“We’ll duplicate these gadgets,” Steve said. 
“We’ll carry the extra ones with us. We 
might make an extra set, for safety, here, 
too. I think— hm — four or five of us should 
be enough to make the attack with. But 
I’ll have to use the probe and locate their 
nearest base.” 

“It’s a coupla hundred miles south,” said 
Lucky. “I found that out. There’s some 
territory there that folks go into and never 
come back. A place about fifty miles across.” 

“Then that’s it. Who’ll come with Lucky 
and me?” 

There was almost an uproar. Eleven men 
among the refugees now considered Steve 
their chief. They had regarded him at first 
with suspicion and then with unease. But 
after witnessing what had happened today 
they trusted him implicitly, and they looked 
forward to . slaughter of the folk who used 
planes and bombs to wreck a world. Their 
eyes burning, to a man they demanded to 
go. 

But Steve chose only three. Then he hesi- 
tated. 

“Lucky, how about you staying back here 
to run things? You know how to pull for 
what’s needed and have it happen.” 

In his mind was the thought of Frances. 
But Lucky rejected the suggestion. 

“No dice, fella,” he said. “I ain’t talked 
much, but I’ve seen plenty. If there’s any 
killin’ of those fellas to be done, I’m goin’ 
to be in on it!” 

There was another distant drum-fire of 
explosions. They listened, and that was all. 
It was merely more planes trying to come 
and bomb them, the only thing they had 
feared most for weeks. But Lucky fidgeted. 

“I want to go out and watch ’em blow up,” 
he said. “We start hikin’ about daybreak, 
Steve? Okay! All set!” 

The council of war broke up. Bob, the 
boy, began the duplication of the devices 
that had been made that morning. Steve 
explained to him gravely that it was more 
important to have many such devices avail- 
able than to perform any other service. It 
was important, too, to train other men to 
make them. 

And the men were desperately anxious to 



learn. Clumsy farmers’ fingers copied, pains- 
takingly, every incomprehensible detail of 
the models the boy set up for them. There 
were four sets complete within three hours. 
Steve, checking them, rearranged one to 
an even greater compactness. It still 
worked. 

By nightfall the model had been refined 
still farther, into a rifle-like projector with a 
blunderbus-like coil where the barrel should 
have been. And five men sat up all night to 
make extra ones for the expedition to carry 
in the morning. 

But before that— much before that — Steve 
and Frances went out-of-doors alone. There 
was a moon again. They talked quietly be- 
neath a spreading tree. Insects made roman- 
tic noises. Night-birds called mournfully 
in the darkness. 

“We’ll make out,” Steve said awkwardly, 
when Frances had protested vehemently 
that she wanted to go too. “But it’s going 
to be a tough hike. We could construct 
some sort of traveling device, but they’d be 
looking out for that. They’d never think, 
though, that people who could blast their 
planes out of the sky would be content to 
travel on foot. So that’s the way we’ll go and 
we’re going to travel fast. Meanwhile you’re 
going to stay here.” 

He kissed her, and her protests were 
stifled. Then there was an isolated explosion, 
far away. Frances started. 

“Just another try by a sneak-plane,” he 
told her. “They’ll keep that up indefinitely.” 
His expression grew pensive. “Er, I’m going 
to bring something back. I used the old 
crater-stone, for sure, and pulled for some- 
thing. And it warmed up. So I know I’ll 
come back with what I want.” 

There was no reason whatever for secrecy, 
but he whispered. And she put her arms 
about his neck. 

Then, suddenly, over at the horizon to the 
south, there was a lurid flare of light as 
brilliant as the sun and vastly larger. For 
the fraction of an instant the world was 
illuminated more brightly than by day. It 
was another atom bomb. Then came the 
blessed dark again. 

And Bob, aged sixteen, who had come out 
to ask Steve a professional question about a 
proposed change in a circuit, blinked in the 
re-fallen darkness. 

“Gosh!” he said. 

He went went back into the house with- 
out disturbing them. 




62 



STARTLING STORIES 



CHAPTER XV- 
Invasi an 



B Y EASY stages, it took them only four 
days to make the two hundred miles, 
because early on the second day they came to 
a broad river. They made a raft and floated 
down it day and night, with only one needing 
to stay awake on watch. 

They used the probe to check their prog- 
ress, and disembarked on the fourth after- 
noon. Then they went on. 

At nightfall there was absolutely no sign 
that this part of the world-all weed-grown 
fields and desolation — was any different from 
any of the rest. But they knew. 

Lucky had become fascinated by the 
probes. There was a switch which, when 
thrown, allowed the object sought for to be 
varied. 

Lucky grinned cheerfully. 

“This is about where the first line of 
watch-dinkuses will be,” he said. 

He’d used the probe on a thought-record 
which made it seek out devices which would 
betray their presence to enemy watchers 
in the center of the foe’s dead area. He knew 
that there were three lines of photo-cells 
and induction balances which, without alarm- 
ing anyone who ventured in, made their 
capture or killing a certainty at the option 
of the inhabitants. 

Lucky swung the probe right and left, and 
chuckled. 

“Pullin’ for a place we can go through 
without settin’ anything off.” 

They went through. They went on. An 
hour later they reached the second line. They 
went through that. The third. Lucky used the 
probe continually. 

“Hold it!” he said presently. “Somethin’ 
funny up ahead.” 

He was quiet for a long time. 

“I don’t get it,” he murmured to Steve 
finally. “I’ve found something to stay away 
from. Not a trap. Not a wamer. Not a big 
bunch of those folks. Not bombs. You try, 
Steve.” 

Steve put the switch of his own probe to 
brain-control and tried. After a little, he 
smiled grimly. 

“Prison-camp,” he said. “A lot of people in 
it. Our kind. Hmmmm.” 

“There’ll be guards, but they’ll be watchin’ 



in, not out,” one of the other three said 
hungrily. “We could kill ’em and — test our 
stuff.” 

“Why not?” said Steve. “I guess we owe 
them quite a bit.” 

They advanced. They came upon a long 
line of electric lights — more of civilization 
than was believed to exist anywhere — and 
a stockade, with hovels inside it. They saw 
a guard pacing up and down, a rifle carried 
negligently over his arm. Lucky squirmed 
away. The others waited. A long time later 
Lucky’s voice came faintly: 

“Hey, fella!” 

The guard whirled, grasping his gun with 
both hands at the ready. Then, in the dim 
light of the electric bulbs, those in the 
darkness saw what happened. The barrel of 
his gun turned white with frost. Sparks — 
arcs — played about his fingers. He could not 
let go. He toppled. He moved spasmodically. 
He rolled over and over. He was still. Then 
his dead body flexed horribly and relaxed 
again. 

Lucky came back, humming snatches of a 
little song to himself. 

“They’d be right curious what killed him, 
if they’d have a chance to look,” he said 
amiably. “Electrocution is handy. It’s per- 
manent and it’s quiet, and any fella with a 
gun carries his own generator providin’ 
he touches his gun in two places and we 
turn a beam on him.” 

The men who had been refugees moved 
forward eagerly. 

Presently the five reached the place where 
the guards’ barracks stood. The guards on 
duty were dead. Killed as their comrade had 
been killed. By electrocution. 

Steve turned his riflelike instrument on 
the barracks. Instantly the lines of electric 
lights flared white-hot and blew out. The 
dynamo for power was in the barracks. He 
had multiplied its voltage enormously, so 
that at the same time, every other bit of 
metal in the building spat charring electric 
sparks. Most of the guards seized weapons 
at the first alarm. They died. The rest 
snatched up weapons when Steve fired a shot 
in the air. They died, too. 

Steve went through the gate beside the 
contorted figure of a man in uniform. The 
rifle which had killed him was still clutched 
fast in his charred fingers. Steve entered 
one of the hovels and spoke briefly and 
urgently to the unseen people within. He 
came out 




THE LAWS OF CHANCE 63 



B EFORE the five were out of sight in 
the darkness, a stream of running 
figures had poured from the prison-camp 
gate and dispersed in the wilderness out- 
side, 

“Hm — slave-labor,” said Steve, thought- 
fully. “That means there’ll be more such 
camps. They must’ve had some way to pro- 
duce food. It may turn out handy!” 

Before dawn came, the five occupied a 
neat, small lookout-building atop a hill. Its 
former occupants were no longer concerned 
with the affairs of this world, and a tele- 
pone instrument buzzed angrily. 

“Fll take the call,” said Steve. 

He picked up the phone. 

• “Hello!” he said pleasantly. “I want to 
speak to the officer in command of this base 
. . . I’m the American in command of the 
forces which is going to wipe you all out if I 
don’t get what I want ... I don’t speak your 
language . . . Speak English, please! . . . We 
have your base under the threat of weapons 
you can’t possibly resist . . . No, I’m not 
crazy! Listen!” 

He nodded to Lucky, who coddled his 
weapon. It was aimed where its probe- 
function had told him the heavy bombers 
were based. A pair of wires in a baking- 
powder bottle along its “barrel” glowed 
incandescent. There was a sudden spout 
of fire four miles away and then a series of 
racking explosions following each other with 
incredible rapidity. 

“You probably heard that,” said Steve into 
the telephone as the echoes rolled. “You’d 
better connect me with your commanding 
officer. I suggest you have him waked up, 
if it’s necessary. I’ll hold the wire.” 

He grinned at Lucky. Lucky was holding 
his weapon vaguely toward the horizon but 
above it 

“I got a hunch,” said Lucky happily. “I 
got a hunch there’s a plane cornin’ in. Right 
on the line where they keep their atom 
bombs.” 

“They’d be fools to keep them assembled,” 
said Steve. “Take a chance. There’ll not 
be more than one or two in firing condi- 
tion, anyhow.” 

Lucky aimed, chanting softly. “Will that 
plane crash the atom-bomb stores, if I knock 
it down now — now — now — now?” 

The wires glowed. 

“Mmmh!” he said. 

There was a long wait. Then, utterly 
without warning, there was a flash of such 



awful radiancy and such ghastly, over- 
whelming heat, that the five momentarily 
were blinded. There was the smell of hot 
paint in the little lookout-building. There 
was a sound which was beyond sound. 
The building rocked on its foundation. 

Steve’s voice came out of a deathly still- 
ness. 

“Really,” he said into the telephone in a 
chiding tone. “We’re getting impatient! Will 
you connect your commanding officer or do 
you want more atom bombs?” 

Chattering, disjointed buzzings came from 
the telephone instrument. 

“You chaps look hungry for something to 
do,” Steve said to the three bearded men of 
his following. “Set fire to part of the town. 
Only part of it, though, mind you!” 

If wires and nails and even kitchen uten- 
sils poured out arcs of electric fire, flames 
would follow. The three small hand-instru- 
ments did not have to furnish the energy 
for the arcs. That was already present in the 
metal objects which would emit them. The 
three men grimly used their weapons. 

“Hello!” said Steve into the telephone. 
“You’re in command? Good! I suppose 
you’re a general? . . . Then, General, you will 
immediately order all your troops under 
arms, march , them to x the nearest prison- 
camps, have them stack arms and deposit all 
cartridge-belts with their small-arms, and 
release the prisoners and take their places. 

“I am sure the prisoners will arm them- 
selves. They may mount guard over your 
men. I wouldn’t know about that. But cer- 
tainly if you haven’t started the carrying out 
of those orders in five minutes you’ll regret 
it.” 

He looked inquiringly at Lucky, who spoke 
softly. 

“The arsenal, where they stock their 
ammunition.” 

“And just to urge you cm,” said Steve 
gently. “Listen!” 

Little wires glowed where four riflelike 
instruments pointed along the line Lucky 
indicated. Heavy detonating tumult began 
off in the night. 

“Your high-explosive bombs will go next,” 
added Steve. “Or we can set the rest of the 
town ablaze, as part of it is burning now.” 

Screaming, squealing sounds came out of 
the telephone. 

“Very well,” said Steve pleasantly. “All 
your men in the prison camps, and all the 




fti STARTLING STORIES 



prisoners out, or I’ll get quite provoked. 
I’m going to hang up now, General, and 
there’ll be no more arguments. Obey your 
orders or we will begin wiping you out.” 

He hung up. His features were pinched 
and very tired, but he was smiling. There 
was a dim red light in the sky to the east 
“It’s queer that I don’t feel like a mur- 
derer,” he said softly. “We must have killed 
a lot of them in the last few minutes. But it 
doesn’t bother me at all. After all, we 
haven’t killed one in a hundred — no, not one 
in a thousand — of the murders they’ve done. 
We really ought to wipe them out. Only 
we can’t do that sort of thing.” 

“Maybe you can’t,” said a bearded man 
grimly. “We can!” 

“You’ll probably have to kill a few,” Steve 
told him. “But it will pall on you when they 
can’t fight back. That’s an odd thing about 
us Americans. We’re about finished here, 
I suspect. We’ll have to tip off the released 
prisoners what it’s all about, and let them 
organize themselves. I imagine they’ve been 
used to cultivating ground as well as for 
work in factories. They’ll put their former 
bosses at those jobs instead. Then we’ll go 
back home. 

“No,” he now added reflectively. “We’ll 
have to leave one of our number here to 
knock off any plane from other bases that 
may turn up, and we’ll have to figure on 
taking over all the other bases there are. 
By plane, I guess, in time.” 

Then he said, with an unconscious gesture 
of brushing off his fingers: 

“Let’s go out and look at the sunrise.” 

I T WAS three days before they started 
back. Five of them had started, and five 
men rode back, but one of the five was a 
stranger. They rode on splendidly-groomed 
horses from the general’s stables, and each 
of the five had, besides, a led horse trailing 
behind him with food for the journey and 
other items that would be welcome. Wire, 
for example, and seemly more other parts 
for more duplications of the probe and 
thought- recorder and the generator-making 
combination that each of them carried, save 
one. But there was cloth, and some toys, 
and sugar, and pepper, and such items as 
conquering heroes may lawfully loot and 
take home to their womenfolk. 

They made the trip back in five days. And 
when the horses emerged from the woods 
near the house and pushed on across weedy 



fields toward it, yells greeted them. Yells of 
purest triumph. And Frances ran and ran 
and ran to meet Steve, so that when he 
swung her up before him she could only 
pant and hold him close while she put up her 
face to be kissed. 

“We did it,” he told her. “One base was 
smashed and taken over by the slave-labor 
they had there. Decent people, the captives 
were, most of them. The other kind were 
more useful outside, as guerillas. The re- 
leased victims are planning an organized 
sweep to wipe out the other bases all over 
America, and then they’ll start on the rest of 
the world.” 

She held fast to him and he could feel the 
beating of her heart. 

“Where’s Lucky?” she said suddenly. 

“He stayed,” Steve told her. “Somebody 
had to, and he stayed with a gadget to pro- 
tect the place until we can send back some 
more stuff. He’s rather wonderful with the 
probe, Frances. He can find anything with 
it. So just before we left, he told me to tell 
you he’s using it for himself. He’s trying 
to find a girl he can like as much as he 
likes you. He says the probe says there’s 
one among the released prisoners. 

“The probe says so. But he hasn’t caught 
up with her yet. She keeps moving around. 
He’s sticking to the job of finding her, 
though. And then, too, he wants to go on 
and help wipe out the other bases.” 

Frances looked up at him in alarm. 

“But you won’t go, Steve! You’ll stay here, 
won’t you? If it — if it wasn’t so crowded, 
this house would be wonderful to live in!” 

Steve smiled. 

“It won’t stay crowded, I suspect. And 
anyhow I’ll remain right here and do some 
experimenting. We’ve started a new kind of 
science and I want to dig into it. That busi- 
ness of molecular motion, now — ” Then he 
stopped. “I brought back what I told you I 
would. Found him among the released pris- 
oners. He didn’t mind coming for the job on 
hand.” 

Frances stared. She peered around Steve’s 
shoulder at the patient-faced man — thin as 
from long hunger — who had taken Lucky 
Connor’s place on the return journey. 

She suddenly flushed crimson. 

Steve reined his horse aside and beckoned 
to the thin man. 

“Reverend, here’s the lady,” he said con- 
tentedly. “If it’s all right with you, we’ll 
have the wedding this afternoon.” 





THE SOMA HACKS 



By MARGARET ST* CLAIR 

Weary of her husband's lethargy, Oona, wife of the future, 
administers a vitalizer — with some very dizzying results! 



S IT, Oona thought resentfully, that was 
all he ever did, just sit. You’d think 
he’d be covered with calluses by now. 
Ever since he’d been laid off at the space 
port, he had been sitting in the sunny patch 
by the window, chewing geela nuts and 
scanning the stereo. She was sick of it. 

Not that Jick was a lazy man. He was a 
good hard worker whenever he had a job, 
and he was sure to get soemthing soon. In 
a lot of ways, he was an ideal husband. He 



was affectionate, he was thoughtful, and he 
always remembered anniversaries. Really, 
she was crazy about him. Only he sat so 
darned much. 

She steered the electro-static cleaner 
close to her husband’s feet. 

“Pick ’em up, honey,” she said. 

“Hunh?” 

After a moment, Jick slowly raised one 
foot and then, perceptibly later, the other. 
Eighty seconds or so after she had finished 
65 



«« STARTLING STORIES 



cleaning under him, he put his feet down 
again. His face was wearing that dopey look 
that bothered Oona so much. 

And if she asked him to do something 
around the house, he acted as if she were 
trying to murder him. Last week he’d got 
a burst of energy. He wanted to make 
something, he said. He’d worked on it all 
day. Well, what had he made? A rack for 
used soma bottles. Soma bottles, for heavens 
sake! They weren’t attractive in any way, 
and they haven’t even any economic value. 
Most people ran them through the garbage 
reducer and were done with them. 

Meanwhile the element on the electronic 
range needed something done to it — it look 
nearly twenty minutes to cook pot roast — • 
there was a fly in the house because the 
lethax at the windows hadn’t been renewed, 
and the steam beer tap in the kitchen leaked 
all the time. 

Oona finished cleaning the eutex. She 
put the cleaner away in a foot locker and 
went into the bedroom to glaze her face and 
rest a minute before starting lunch. While 
the cosmetic-soaked pads were drying, she 
picked up a magazine and began flipping over 
the pages. 

Zibeline was the color this season, it 
seemed, and Venusian quohogs were win- 
ning wide popularity in the stereo colony 
as pets. Maddi Trax was having twin baby 
girls in April and . . . An ad caught Oona’s 
eyes. It ran: 

Do they call you LAZY? Do you lack energy, 
ouft, push? Henderson’s Vitalizer was made 
for you. It floods the cells with radiant energy 
from the sub-molecular cosmic fountains. Not 
a chemical, not a drug. Harmless. Permanent. 
Cumulative. Recommended by Consumers’ In- 
stitute. Ask to see it at your stereo dealer’s. 

H’m. Consumers’ Institute was, on the 
whole, reliable. The metallic dust Oona used 
on her hair was recommended by them, and 
so was her eye do. And it didn’t seem to her 
her that she could stand another day of see- 
ing Jick sitting in the corner, the only mobile 
thing about him his slowly moving jaws. 

S HE stopped in at the stereo dealer’s on 
her way back from mart. 
“Henderson’s Vitalizer?” he said, “Sure. 
We sell a lot of them.” 

He reached under the counter and brought 
up a small, square, silvery box. Its edges 
had a peculiar wavy, elusive quality. Oona’s 
eyes had trouble in making them stay still. 



“The Henderson people have done a sweet 
engineering job on this model,” he said. “All 
the power and special features of the cabinet 
size, and it weighs less than a kilo.” 

“How does it work?” 

“It taps the sub-molecular quanta of 
energy on the cosmic level and relays them 
directly to the nerve cells.” 

“Hunh?” 

“I said, it taps the sub-molecular quan- 
ta—” 

“Oh, never mind. ... Is it harmless?” \ 

“Harmless? I should say so. I use It 
myself. It’s fully guaranteed. Only thing is, 
you want not to overdo it. It’s darned near 
permanent, the way they say, and it’s cu- 
mulative, too. There are times when you 
don’t want to have too much energy.” 

Oona looked at the Vitalizer again. 

“How much is it?” she asked. 

He told her. She sighed. 

“Full instructions come with it,” the dealer 
added persuasively. 

“Well— I'll take it.” 

Reluctantly, Oona counted out the money 
into the dealer’s hand. It was quite a lot, 
but it would certainly be worth it if it made 
a difference in Jick. 

During the ride home, she studied the in- 
struction booklet. All you had to do was to 
press the stud on the side — the Vitalizer 
was completely self-powered — and stand in 
front of the orifice from which, according to 
the booklet, the marvelous flood of truly 
cosmic energy was pouring forth. You shut 
it off when you were done. 

Well. Jick usually took a little nap after 
dinner. It would be simple to use it on 
him then. She did hope it would work. The 
directions said not to use it for more than 
five minutes at a time. 

After dinner she cleared the dishes from 
the table and waited in the kitchen until she 
heard Jick’s breathing grow even and deep. 
Then she brought in the Vitalizer, set it on 
the table in front of him, and pressed the 
stud. 

Nothing appeared to happen, though Oona 
watched with interest. Jick kept on breath- 
ing placidly, and . . . What was that smell? 
Had she forgot to set the chronnox? 

She made a dash for the kitchen. Yes, the 
beets she had planned to pickle tomorrow 
had boiled dry. She dumped the repulsive 
mess into the reducer, ran cold water over 
the outside of the pan, and then put it to 
soak. 




THE SOMA RACKS 67 



For a moment Oona stood undecided. 
Should she cook more beets? Jick did like 
them the way she pickled them. On the other 
hand, the prepared ones were almost as 
good. 

Oh, heavens! She had left the Vitalizer 
going. Oona raced for the dining apse and 
hastily shut the Vitalizer off. She looked at 
her watch. Seven minutes. Goodness. Well, 
maybe it wouldn’t make any difference. Gee, 
she hoped it would be all right. 

Jick got up early next morning. 

“I feel fine today,” he announced as he 
rubbed depilating cream into his cheeks. 
“Full of pep. I’d like to do something. 
Let’s see, now. There must be a lot of things 
around the house it would be fun to do. 
Well, I’ll think of something after break- 
fast.” 

Oona’s eyes were shining. She blessed 
Mr. Henderson. The Vitalizer was wonder- 
ful. After breakfast she would remind Jick 
about the lethax and the element in the 
range, and maybe she could get him to fix the 
beer tap sometime in the afternoon. Golly, 
Golly. 

He ate enormously — a whole rhea egg, 
four big slices of grilled bollo, and a tower- 
ing stack of whost. He pushed his plate back 
with a satisfied grunt, and got up and 
stretched. 

“Tell you what I think I’ll do,” he said. 
“I’ll go out in hangarage and look around. 
All kinds of things in the hangarage.” 

He started toward the door. Oona stared 
after him. Oh, my. She would have to be 
careful. If he got started — 

E CAME back in ten minutes or so. 
“Look what I found,” he said hap- 
pily, holding a roll of plastic-covered wire 
out to her. “Must be four or five hundred 
meters left. I think I’ll make another of 
those soma bottle racks like I made the 
other day. Useful things.” 

Oona’s mouth came open slowly. 

“But — but — ” she said. 

Jick was paying no attention to her. He 
seated himself in his corner by the stereo, 
spread pliers, snips and press-weld out in 
front of him, and began to work. 

Oona watched his fingers flying with a 
fascination that had in it a touch of horror. 
Certainly the Vitalizer had speeded him up. 
She had never seen him work as quickly as 
he was now, and he seemed to be going a 
little faster all the time. But another soma 



bottle rack They weren’t good for anything, 
nothing at all! 

He finished the soma rack in an incredibly 
short time. 

“There!” he said, holding it up to her to 
admire. “Pretty quick, if I do say so my- 
self. It took me all day for the first one, re- 
member? And this one’s better in every 
way.” 

He looked so happy and satisfied with him- 
self that Oona hadn’t the heart to say any- 
thing. 

“It certainly is,” she agreed, swallowing 
painfully. “It certainly is. Say, Jick.” 

“M’m? I think I’ll try another one; see if 
I can’t cut my time down some.” 

He was already unrolling wire and bending 
it. Before her eyes another soma rack was 
taking shape. 

Oona retreated to the kitchen. She pressed 
her head against the cool glow of the 
chronnox and tried to think. It was the Vita- 
lizer, of course. He had had an overdose. 
What was she going to do? It was a lot worse 
to have Jick busy making soma bottle racks 
than it was to have him doing nothing at all. 
He seemed to feel fine. It hadn’t hurt him. 
But all those racks! 

By lunchtime he had finished fourteen of 
them. He kept them around his plate while 
he ate — he had an appetite like a forest 
fire — and pointed out their merits to Oona 
with his fork. 

“I’ll see if I can’t speed it up a little after 
lunch,” he said brightly. “I certainly am 
getting good at it.” 

He was. Oona had noticed that his fingers 
were moving faster with every rack. Part of 
the time they were nothing but a blur. Fas- 
ter all the time. 

“But what’ll I do with them?” she said, 
almost wildly. It was like the story of the 
man who had the magic salt mill he didn’t 
know how to stop. It ground out salt, salt, 
salt until he was smothered under it. “What 
are they good for, anyhow?” 

“Um?” said Jick abstractedly. Done with 
his third slab of pie, he was starting another 
soma rack. “Oh, they’re nice just to have. 
Interesting. Lot of work in them. Or you 
could hang them around the walls of the 
room. For an ornament. I could drive a lot 
of nails for you.” 

Oona could have cried. . . . 

She had been asleep for less than two 
hours that night when she was awakened by 
a stealthy movement by her side. “ ’S mat- 





68 STARTLING STORIES 

ter?” she asked somnolently. bottle racks was perceptibly higher than it 



Jick patted her on the shoulder. “You go 
on back to sleep, honey,” he said. He was 
talking a lot faster now, too. “I don’t feel a 
bit sleepy, somehow, and I thought I’d get 
up and — ” 

“Make some more soma bottle racks?” 
Oona cried. 

“Why, yes. How’d you know?” 

She heard him stumbling over the furni- 
ture as he progressed toward the living room. 
There was a damp tear spot on Oona’s pillow 
before she got back to sleep. . . . 

She stuck it out for two days before she 
went back to the stereo dealer. 

“You’ve got to do something!” she cried. 
“It’s terrible! He’d made three hundred 
and six of those things when I left the house, 
and there’ll be a couple of dozen more when 
I get back. He sleeps less than two hours a 
night, and our food bills are four times what 
they used to be. I can’t stand it. You said 
the Vitalizer was guaranteed, didn’t you? 
All right, do something!” 

“It is guaranteed,” the dealer said re- 
provingly. “You must have given him an 
overdose. I warned you about that.” 

“So what? A guarantee ought to mean 
something.” 

“It does. The Vitalizer hasn’t harmed 
him in any way, has it? He feels like a mil- 
lion dollars, doesn’t he?” 

“But I don’t care! It’s busting up my 
home! If you don’t do something, I’ll sue 
you for everything in the book!” 

T HE dealer popped a geela nut into his 
mouth and chewed slowly while he con- 
sidered. 

For several moments he kept silent. 

“Tell you what I’ll do,” he said at last. 
“There’s a new product on the market, just 
came in today, called the Tranquilate. If you 
want to try one on your husband, I’ll let you 
take it home, absolutely free of charge, and 
see what it does. It’s supposed to relax hy- 
pertension, and reduce irritability of nervous 
tissue to stimuli. They all say it’s a wonder- 
ful thing.” 

“You mean it might sort of tone him 
down?” 

“Well, it should.” 

The afternoon was muggy and hot. Oona 
was damp with the perspiration of anxiety 
and haste before she got home with the 
Tranquilate. Jick was sitting where she had 
left him. The level of the pile of soma 



had been. 

“Hi!” he greeted her. He was talking so 
fast now that she couM hardly separate the 
words. “I made twenty- eight more while 
you were gone.” 

Oona nodded and hurried out to the kitch- 
en, the Tranquilate — it was less than twelve 
centimeters square — in her marting bag. You 
were supposed to plug it into a socket and 
let it warm up for five minutes before you 
began to experience the relaxing, soothing, 
irritability-relieving effects of the elimina- 
tion of hypertension. Okay. Okay. How 
was she going to use it on Jick? 

She solved the problem by popping the 
Tranquilate into a thermoplex casserole and 
standing behind Jick with it while she fid- 
dled with the knives and forks on the table. 
If Jick looked up, her body would be hiding 
the cord from the Tranquilate. He would 
think she was setting the table for dinner or 
something. Meantime it would be acting up- 
on him. 

The plan worked very well. Jick noticed 
nothing, and Oona was able to give him the 
full thirteen-minute exposure to the Tran- 
quilate the instruction booklet advised. 
Then she slipped the device back into its 
box in the kitchen and stood watching Jick 
from the door. 

For a few minutes nothing happened. 
Then Jick’s hands froze into immobility 
above his work. His eyes grew blank, his 
face took on an expression of glassy, par- 
alyzed, Oriental calm. The fly that had got 
in through the lethax buzzed around his head 
and settled on his left eyelid, but he made no 
move to ward it off. He seemed to have stop- 
ped breathing. He looked like a soul which 
has attained Nirvana, only dopier. 

Oona was appalled. 

“Oh, Jick, honey!” she cried, “What’s the 
matter? Jick, what is it now? Honey, speak 
to me!” 

He did not answer her. His jaw had drop- 
ped down, the fly moved from his eyelid to 
his lower lip, and began crawling around out- 
side his mouth. Oona rushed up to him and 
shook him, and his body moved to the action 
as if it were one solid piece. Her hand 
pressed to her forehead, Oona regarded him 
feverishly for an instant. 

The seizure, or whatever it was — the 
manufacturers of the Tranquilate would 
probably have called it a complete relax- 
ation of hypertension— lasted for about five 




THE SOMA RACKS 69 



minutes, during which Oona, distracted, did 
everything she could to bring Jick out of it 
short of throwing the chronnox in the kitch- 
en at his head. Then it was over as sudden- 
ly as it had begun, and he was making soma 
racks again, his hands a shapeless blur from 
speed. He gave no sign of having experienced 
anything unsual. 

From then on until dark Oona timed him. 
The periods of activity lasted, she found, 
exactly twenty-five minutes. The spells of 
paralysis were slightly variable in their 
duration, but the average was four and three- 
quarter minutes. He was as regular as a 
geyser. The Tranquilate, it seemed, had not 
neutralized the Vitalizer, but had merely 
overlaid its effects with its own. 

Oona didn’t know what to do. She pulled 
a seatette out of the kitchen wall and 
perched on it, trying to think, and listen- 
ing to the growing rumble of thunder in the 
east. Her chin was quivering, and her eyes 
were wet with tears which kept slopping 
over and running down her cheeks. 

W HAT had she done? Busted the 
nicest husband a girl ever had, that’s 
what, and all because she objected to his sit- 
ting around and getting a good rest. She 
could kill that stereo dealer! If Jick ever 
got over it, he could sit around till barnacles 
grew on him, and she wouldn’t say a single 
word. 

Would he get over it? Would he? The 
dealer had said it was permanent. She could 
take Jick to a doctor, of course, but it hard- 
ly seemed like a case for the medical pro- 
fession. There was nothing wrong with Jick’s 
body, anyway. He didn’t need a doctor; he 
needed something more like an electrician or 
a mechanic. Oh, she would give anything in 
the world to have him sitting in the corner 
once more, scanning the stereo and chewing 
geela nuts. 

The thunderstorm was getting nearer. The 
interval between flash and rumble grew less 
and less, and the jagged streaks in the sky 
seemed awfully close. Oona wasn’t exactly 
afraid of lightning, but it made her uneasy. 
Even though Jick in his present state was 
about as much comfort as a turret lathe, she 
went into the living room to be near him. 

By now it was quite dark. Oona would 
have liked to turn on the flurors, but she 
felt nervous about pressing the stud with all 
that electricity flying around outside. Every 
time one of the long vivid flashes ripped the 



sky apart, she could see Jick in his corner, 
working away. 

She pulled up a hummock of electrifluffed 
nyloflock and sat down on it, her head press- 
ing against her husband’s thigh. He had gone 
into the dopey part of his cycle now; his 
furious activity had been replaced by im- 
mobility, and she couldn’t even feel him 
breathe. 

Suddenly he began working again. What? 
Why, it hadn’t been nearly four minutes yet, 
not nearly. He stopped abruptly, started 
working again, stopped, started, stopped. 
Oona looked up at him in the cold white ra- 
diance of the almost continual lightning 
flashes, her eyes wide with apprehension and 
surprise. 

Abruptly he got up from his seat and 
walked into the center of the room. Oona, 
feeling that she couldn’t stand much more, 
saw that pale blue fire, like soma burning, 
was playing over his body and dripping 
down in long gushes from his head and 
arms. 

Jick began to dance. As lightning flash 
followed flash, he leaped from one ungainly 
posture into another,' as stiffly as a galvanized 
frog, in an uncanny, horrifying version of 
the highland fling. Oona screamed, but the 
sound was lost in the vast artillery of the 
thunder overhead. The blue fire dripping 
weirdly from his outstretched arms, Jick 
continued to cavort and dance. 

There came one last tremendous thunder- 
bolt, so bright it seemed to sear the eyeballs, 
so loud the house shook under it, and then 
the rain started to beat down upon the roof. 

Jick stood still. The horrid blue fire be- 
gan to die away from his body and limbs. 
Oona, strained her eyes toward him in the 
gloom, fearing what would happen next. 

For a long moment there was no noise ex- 
cept the steady drumming of the rain upon 
the roof. Then Jick cleared his throat. 

“Say, listen, honey.” he said in his normal 
voice. “What’s the idea staying here in the 
dark? Whyn’t you turn the flurors on?” 

Oona went up to him, her knees feeling all 
wobbly and soft. He sounded — he sounded . . . 
Oh, could it be that the storm had cured 
him? She laid her hand timidly on his 
shoulder and then, yielding to emotion, 
threw her arms around his neck. 

“Why, what’s the matter, sweetheart?” 
Jick said. He was holding her in a sweet, 
dose embrace. “What’s the matter with my 
(Concluded on page 93) 





A Hall of 
Fame Novelet 



WHEN PLANETS 



E DITOR’S NOTE: Some stories are forgotten 
almost as soon as they are printed. Others 
stand the test of time. Because “When Planets 
Clashed,” by Manly Wade Wellman, has stood 
this test, it has been nominated for SCIEN- 
TIFICTION’S HALL OF FAME and is reprinted 
here. Outstanding fantasy classics are honored in 
each issue of this magazine. We hope in this way 
to bring a new permanence to the science fiction 
gems of yesterday and perform a real service for 
the science fiction devotees of today and tomor- 
row! Nominate your favorites! 

FOREWORD 

M Y PART in repelling the attempted 
Martian invasion of Earth in the 
years 2675-77 was a limited one. 
As for my skill in telling of it, I again 

70 



recognize my limitations. Many learned and 
authoritative writers have said their say 
about our first and only interplanetary war. I, 
who am no writer at all, add to their works 
only because of a request from men in high 
places, who argue that my story is a unique 
chapter in that conflict’s history. 

Like wars of earlier times, the Martian- 
Terrestrial hostilities had a deep foundation 
in mistunderstanding. Several hundred years 
previously radio communication was first 
established between the worlds and, shortly 
afterward, intrepid Martian scientists reached 
Earth in a pioneer space-ship. They were 
welcomed with both hospitality and suspi- 
cion. 

Much was said to their faces of brother- 




hood and good will across the emptiness of 
space; much more behind their backs of 
preparation against possibly dangerous visi- 
tors from the only other inhabited planet in 
the solar system. In succeeding years, when- 
ever the orbits of the two worlds brought 
them into comparative proximity, a flourish- 
ing exchange of trade goods and tourists 
sprang up, and potential enmity as well. 

The first strain in interplanetary relation 
came when representatives of the World 
League rejected the request of the ruler of 
Mars for permission to establish colonies on 
Earth. When the Martian executive pro- 
tested that his planet, with deserts where 
oceans once stood, was dying, he was told 



that Earth was rapidly approaching a similar 
condition and it could not engage to feed 
mouths from across space. 

This and other differences did not help to 
maintain good feeling. Then one day a party 
of Martian tourists, riding in a sight-seeing 
car at St. Louis, seat of the World League's 
government, was surrounded by a crowd of 
roistering students. One wealthy Martian, 
ordered his retainers to clear a way for the 
car. 

A fight ensued, in which the Martians were 
severely beaten with sticks and cudgels. 
Three of them died, including a man high in 
office on his own planet. Others sustained 
bad injuries. 



Copyright, 1931 , by Gemsback Publications, Inc. 

71 



72 STARTLING STORIES 



The ruler of Mars sent a brusque demand 
by radio, calling the incident a proof of 
Earth’s enmity. He asked redress for the 
families of the dead Martians, as well as the 
surrender of the Terrestrial rioters, then 
held in jail at St. Louis. 

In the meantime, he proposed to seize and 
hold as hostages all Terrestrials then upon 
his planet. In this way it was expected 
retaliation might be made and the deter- 
mination of Mars to see this thing through 
be shown. 

After a brief consultation, the World 
League’s representatives empowered their 
president, Silas Parrish, to send an even 
more blunt reply. In substance it refused 
the demands of the Martian ruler and also 
accused him of seeking an excuse for war 
with Earth. As for the Terrestrials he held, 
the World League sent its police to arrest 
all Martians on Earth as a retaliation. 

This was followed by agreement to release 
hostages on both planets, and the return of 
the captives to their own planet I was 
among those deported from Mars, and with 
my experiences at that time I begin this 
account, endeavoring to make it both ac- 
curate and readable. 

JACK STILLWELL 



CHAPTER I 
Farewell 



fkF ALL the Terrestrials up on Mars at 
” the beginning of hostilities, few, if any 
regretted more than I the order to return to 
Earth. Five years before, at the age of 
twenty, I had come to Mars as the youngest 
member of the Terrestrial Legation. My ties 
at home had been light, for I was an orphan, 
and I had gladly come to this strange planet 
to lay the foundations for a career and a 
fortune. 

I had not suffered on Mars. In the years 
when one progresses from youth into man- 
hood he gets much out of life in the- way of 
pleasures, knowledge and friends. The lat- 
ter, to me, were Martians of my own age. I 
found them understanding, responsive, 
square. We talked togther of the good times 
to come when, grown to the leadership of our 
worlds, we would make for yet a stronger 
and closer alliance. And I had met Yann. 

Yann to me was more sweet, more lovely 
and more loveable than any woman of my 
own planet — Yann, dark-faced, alert, with 
the flashing Martian black eyes and quick 
understanding. When her hand first touched 
mine in greeting I felt its pressure upon my 
heart. And would this war lose her to me? 

On my last night in Ekadome, the City of 



Martian Rulers, I left the company of my 
fellow Terrestrials as they sat in groups at 
the rocket port and glumly discussed the 
impeding conflict. We were hemmed about 
with guards, but the commanding officer of 
the port was my old friend. To him I made 
my plea, and he readily accepted my parole 
and sent me, with a servant, to find a closed 
Martian electro-car. 

“Back an hour before dawn,” he warned 
me in the quick staccato Martian tongue. 
“When the sun rises, your ship clears.” 

The car whirled me through subterranean 
corridors to my destination. I stepped from 
it at last, and found a lift. The operator 
thought nothing of me, for, with my Martian 
clothes and haircut, and the deep tan of three 
summers in the Martian resort, Pulambar, I 
had little of the Terrestrial in my appear- 
ance. 

He complied with my request to be taken 
to the upper levels, although, had he known 
my origin, he would have raised a shout 
that would have brought citizens of Ekadome 
to mob me. I reached the open air but five 
steps from a dear gateway I had come to 
know well. 

Inside was Yann’s garden, roofed over with 
a transparent, vitreous veil to shut out the 
cold night air. Blossoms as large as table- 
tops and of wildly gorgeous colors lined the 
path on either hand. Beyond them I saw 
Yann, on a seat beneath a clump of plants 
like giant, many-tinted cattails. 

I swiftly reached her side. As she offered 
her hand I touched it with my lips for the 
first time. It quivered like a startled bird, 
but did not draw away. 

“Sit down, Chac,” she invited in her de- 
lightful Martian tongue — quick and vibrant. 

“I have come to say goodby.” 

“Goodbys should never be said,” volun- 
teered another voice. It was Yann’s brother, 
Nalo, who had been lounging in nearby Mar- 
tian shadows. He now came forward to press 
my palm between both of his, Martian fash- 
ion. “'Whatever our foolish worlds may do, 
Chac, you and I are friends.” 

“Friends and brothers,” I replied. 

“Well you may say that the worlds are 
foolish,” said Yann as we sat down with her, 
one on either hand. “Every great man in our 
council tells the reason why we went to war, 
and each reason is different from all the 
others.” 

“The real cause is that we two peoples, 
while similar in appearance, are different in 
language and customs,” said Nalo. “We find 
it too hard to speak each other’s language 
or wear each other’s clothes.” 

“Chac wears Martian costume and I don’t 
object to his accent,” said Yann. “It makes 
him charming.” 

She smiled to me as she spoke and for 




WHEN PLANETS CLASHED 



such a smile I would gladly have died. I 
cannot tell you how oval was her face, how 
black her hair; how her figure was at once 
regal and delicate, how her every motion was 
grace quickened to life, how her glad spirit 
gave a light that illuminated my dark mood 
like a lamp. These things are sacred and 
have no place in a history of bloodshed. 

“War is a childish thing in any case,” went 
on Nalo. “Somewhere in the history of your 
world, Chac, a war was fought against or- 
ganized criminals. With that exception, I 
can tell you of no fighting that was ever good 
or wise.” 

“You are right,” I agreed. 

“However, I don’t think that there will be 
a long conflict. It is thirty days or more 
between worlds. During a space-ship’s flight 
of that duration, friendship might last, but 
not hate. We shall all gather and laugh at 
this thing before we are a great deal older.” 

“Nalo is right there, too,” smiled Yann. 
“The silly trouble will soon be settled. Then, 
Chac, you can come back to us.” 

“Yes,” I said, “I can come back to you.” 

MBACK to them — to her! The words in her 
mouth seemed so true, and were so much 
what I wished! I looked at her in adoration. 
Nalo read my heart and his white teeth 
flashed in a grin. 

“There are guests inside,” he said. “I 
must beg to be forgiven if I go to help my 
father entertain them. Chac, here is my 
hand between yours. May we meet again 
soon!” 

He strode away, as true a gentleman as 
ever breathed the air of any planet. A door 
closed behind him. I turned to Yann. 

"He knew I wanted to be alone with you,” 
I said. 

“With me? Delightful!” 

The tears fought to break from my eyes, 
for I was very young, very miserable, and 
very much in love. 

“Yann, dearest — ” I choked. “How shall 
I say that I must leave?” 

She put out her hand as if she knew how 
eager I was for her touch. As I clasped 
it in mine and bowed above it, the finger of 
her other hand rested lightly on my hair. So 
we stood silently for a second then our arms 
went around each other and for a blessedly 
aching space we kissed. Her eyes flickered 
shut in ecstasy, then opened and looked into 
mine. 

“Sit down, Chac,” she said. 

I did so. She dropped onto the seat beside 
me, fondling my hand. 

“We love each other,” she said, “and now 
we must be worlds apart. But, my dear, let 
us be brave for each other’s sake.” 

I nodded silently. 



73 

“You are returning to your earth. As a 
young man, you will be ordered to do your 
part in fighting my people.” 

“Never! Never!” I cried passionately. "I 
will go to prison before I make war on you 
and yours.” 

“No, Chac,” she said. “That is not the way 
to think. You are a Terrestrial, beloved, 
and you must be true to your birthright. 
Do your duty as it is required of you. Work 
or fight, as you are bidden. Whatever you 
do, do it well and honestly. And, oh, Chac, 
try to avoid danger. Live through whatever 
befalls you, and come back when the war is 
over!” 

I kissed her trembling mouth again and, 
holding her close, vowed that I would return 
to claim her if I lived. At last, when time 
came for me to return to the rocketport, I 
carried my head high and stifled the pain 
within me, for I gloried in the new-found 
love that Yann bore me. 

We deported Terrestrials left Mars on the 
morning of January 2, 2675. On February 
8— in those days the interplanetary passage 
took a month or longer — our ships slid into 
the atmosphere of Earth and settled onto the 
landing stages of the New Orleans rocket- 
port. We emerged from the hatchways to be 
surrounded by port attendants and officers, 
eager to talk to us about Mars as we had last 
seen it. Was the Martian morale good? Was 
the preparation for warfare far advanced? 
Had we suffered indignities? And a thousand 
other queries. 

In turn they gave us the latest news. Al- 
though our ships had been unmolested by the 
enemy (for such I knew I must thenceforth 
consider the Martians), several skirmishes 
had flared up between opposing patrols in 
space. One young officer, a red- faced lieu- 
tenant who was very vain of his expensive 
new uniform, had told me that only two 
days before he had helped beat back a com- 
bat group from Mars which had ventured to 
within a half million miles of Earth. 

“They’re going to be harder to whip than 
the news dispatches say,” he told me. “How- 
ever, we did plenty with our new ray-guns. 
If you’ve been away for five years, you 
can’t have heard much about the disintegra- 
tor ray. Want to have a look?” 

He took me to a long, rakish warcraft 
that rested on a stage nearby and in the 
gun room pointed out a complex system of 
levers and coils. 

“Here is the target finder,” he said. “Tele- 
vision, of course. With it you can locate and 
aim at a range of a thousand miles or more, 
though the ray itself won’t be effective so 
far away. On the space-dreadnoughts there 
are long-range poppers that can do the busi- 




74 STARTLING < 



ness at many times that distance.” 

He fiddled with the mechanism. “Once you 
spot the target, you put the ‘finger’ on it — 
the ray, that is, just like turning a search- 
light on some object — and press this lever. 
Whatever is at the other end will disin- 
tegrate on the moment. It’s all more com- 
plicated than I can explain, full of atomic 
explosion formulas and the like.” 

“Did you get many Martians in the fight?” 
I asked. 

“We washed out a dozen or so. I finished 
two myself, with this very ray-gun. So." 
He turned on the power. The finder showed 
us a distorted view of tall buildings. 

“That’s right here in town. Suppose we 
were attacking Shreveport.” He spun a dial 
rapidly. A new skyline rose into view. “Now, 
if the ray was working, and "I cared to, I 
could knock off that tallest building ’way up 
the Mississippi, as easily as I did those red 
and white Martian ships day before yester- 
day. Snip! Like that!” 

“Red and white Martian ships?” I re- 
peated. “That would be the Young Defenders. 
They’re a junior sky corps, Martians about 
our age or a bit under. I know some of the 
officers. They’re very decent fellows.” 

HE lieutenant looked at me queerly. 
“That’s a bad way to talk, now that 
we’re at war,” he said. “Martians are more 
appealing as targets than as house guests, 
just now.” 

“Rot!” said I, nettled. “You’d be glad to 
know such chaps at any other time. Can’t we 
be sane about this scrap?” 

He studied me with narrowed eyes as we 
left the ship. 

“I'm not at all sure,” he said in parting, 
“that I should have told you so much about 
the ray-gun.” 

He was too clumsy in his suggestion that 
I was a Martian sympathizer. Had he been 
less so, my temper might have gone. As it 
was, I laughed and walked away, but the 
discourse left a bad taste in my mouth which 
lasted all the way to St. Louis. There I went 
at once to the office of James Stillwell, staff 
member with the Intelligence Department 
of the Terrestrial Army. This man, my uncle 
and only living relative, was also my closest 
friend on Earth. 

His duties were many, but he turned from 
them in a second to give me a warm wel- 
come. 

“You are home safe and happy!” he cried, 
forcing me into a seat. 

“Not so happy, uncle,” I told him. 

“That girl on Mars, eh?” I held few 
secrets from him. “Well, Jack, I hope that 
you won’t distress yourself too much about 
her. This is war, my boy, and there will be 
enough blood spilled to wet the way clear to 



Mars and back again before you will be able 
to see her. Are you going into the service?” 
“That’s why I’m here.” 

“Good boy! And what branch do you want 
to enter?” 

“I haven’t made any choice.” 

“Then you need go no further than the 
Intelligence. You’re young, smart, and just 
back from a long stay on Mars. Men like you 
are invaluable. We’ll have you in a uniform 
this very day. What is your reserve rating? 
Captain, I think? Right? Well, come along.” 
I did so, glad for his wholesome cordiality. 
Yet my determination to do my utmost was 
fostered, not by anything that he said, but 
by the words of Yann, who had urged me to 
work or fight my best, even against her 
people. 



CHAPTER n 
Raiders from Space 



tRKTE OF Earth began the war in excellent 
-spirits. We were mightier in numbers, 
richer in all resources, save metals, than 
the Martians. They had the better of us in 
volume of fighting materials — space-ships, 
ammunition, the thousand things that armed 
forces must have — but we did not expect 
them to be ready for a decisive attack upon 
us for quite awhile. 

In the meantime the planets were swinging 
apart and two years and more would pass 
before they drew close again — ample time 
for us to gather and equip forces for our 
defense. 

The new disintegrator ray-gun, the same 
weapon that was explained to me on the day 
that I returned from Mars, was one of our 
chief hopes. It was rightly believed to be 
far superior to the roving bomb, which was 
directed and exploded by radio controls and 
which, as a deadly weapon in aerial warfare, 
had often been used in the past by both 
Terrestrial and Martian nations. The ray- 
guns were being manufactured in quantity 
even as I came back, while thousands of 
young volunteers were learning their use 
and mechanism. 

That the Martian agents would attempt to 
carry news and working plans of this device 
to their people was, perhaps, the chief fear 
of our High Command in those days. The 
Intelligence Department and its attendant 
throngs of operatives kept constant watch 
upon factories, broadcasting stations and 
other points. 

Every message put on the wires or the air 
was rigidly censored. As an Intelligence 
officer, therefore, I found plenty to do to 
keep from brooding on what I had left behind 




WHEN PLANETS CLASHED 



me on Mars. 

On April first, 2675, war came in earnest, 
as dreadful as it was unexpected. 

So suddenly were the raiders upon us that 
we knew it not. They struck Earth effective- 
ly in three places. Steel mills in Labrador, 
built to accommodate the large quantities of 
ore mined in the Republic of Greenland, 
were blown to bits in the night by roving 
bombs, while the attackers fled without being 
seen. 

In the same hour, at Flagstaff, Arizona, 
the observatory and the interplanetary 
broadcasting station located there were de- 
molished by a flight of Martian space-ships 
which were sighted but escaped unharmed. 
As noon of April first approached and sunset 
came to the other side of Earth, barracks at 
Algiers were smitten and two thousand new- 
ly-recruited soldiers killed like so many 
ants. 

Vengeful swarms of Terrestrial ships sped 
into space, searching here and there, but to 
no avail. The Martians, their errand done, 
showed the cleanest heels in history, while 
the pursuers were forced to return for want 
of a trail in the trackless sky. 

But return did not bring rest. Two nights 
later the Martians were back again. They 
neatly knocked a row of meteorological lab- 
oratories from the tops of the Rocky Moun- 
tains, as boys knock birds from a branch 
with stones. 

Factories and warehouses at Rio di Ja- 
neiro were smashed to rubbish. At Nash- 
ville the raiders swooped down, but found a 
hot reception. Ray-gun defenses disposed of 
five and sent the others away, their errand 
of destruction brought to nothing. 

In the morning this last incident was 
being celebrated as a victory by short- 
sighted folks, but those with whom the com- 
bat rested were really worried, the Intel- 
ligence Department most of all. 

It chanced that I was in the office of my 
uncle when two of his fellow staff-members, 
Clyde Atrim and Gundell Goldansky, burst 
in. I rose, saluted, and started to go, but 
Atrim waved me to a seat. 

"You may as well hear us, Captain Still- 
well,” he said. “It’s a pity that all the de- 
partment isn’t here.” 

HI E SEATED himself across the desk from 
my uncle. 

"Because we put the finger on those five 
feeble Martians at Nashville Earth must 
consider the war half won!” he exploded. “It 
was no credit to us that they were washed 
out. They foolishly exposed themselves and, 
had they escaped, they would have been sure 
to draw reprimands!” 1 

"The sad thing is,” continued his com- 



75 

panion, “that they’ll be back again, tonight 
or tomorrow night or the next, at some point. 
Every raid cripples us worse. They’re wreck- 
ing our factories, killing our fighting men 
right and left. We’ll have to put a stop to 
them, or Earth will be whipped inside of 
three months.” 

“It stands to reason,” argued Atrim, “that 
there aren’t a great many of them, or they 
wouldn’t hit and run. They’d stay and make 
a battle of it with our patrols. I’m willing 
to wager that the raiding parties are the 
same in each case, a small group of fast 
space-ships. They can dash out from hiding, 
strike at a previously designated spot and 
dash back again.” 

“Where is their base then?” asked Gold- 
ansky. “They certainly aren’t flying to and 
fro from Mars every night.” 

“Hardly,” said my uncle. “The inter- 
planetary passage must be more' than a hun- 
dred and twenty million miles just now. 
That would take a tremendous ship, and the 
journey would last three months or more.” 

“Then they must be on Earth somewhere,” 
said Goldansky. 

But, though thousands of air-scouts pa- 
trolled the entire surface of the globe next 
day and investigations were ordered in every 
community of every nation, nothing was 
learned. But, on the second night following 
the conference in my uncle’s office, the 
raiders struck once more, bombing govern- 
ment granaries in Siberia. 

Early next morning, as my uncle and I 
ruefully discussed the radio reports of the 
attack, Goldansky and Atrim, the latter car- 
rying a suitcase, again burst into the office. 

“We’ve spotted them!” cried Goldansky 
excitedly. 

“Who?” asked my uncle.” 

“Why, the Martians!” said Atrim. “Look 
here!” 

He opened the suitcase and dragged out 
a rumpled mass of metal-braced fabric, 
shaped roughly like a coverall garment. 

“They shot down one of the space-ships in 
Siberia last night,” he explained. “Luckily, 
it wasn’t all disintegrated. Its equipment, 
which officers thought worthy of examina- 
tion, was rushed here this morning. This was 
part of it.” 

My uncle considered the thing carefully, 
then raised questioning eyes. 

“But it’s only a space-suit, a standard 
piece of equipment in the lockers of any 
interplanetary ship.” 

“Only a space-suit, eh?” snapped Goldan- 
sky, almost belligerent in his earnestness. 
“Look at the thing’s shoes!” 

He pointed to them. 

"They’re worn and scratched, even if their 
soles are thicker and stronger than ordinary. 




7$ STARTLING 

Nojw, these suits are designed to allow repair 
work on the outside of ships while in space. 
Isn’t that right?” 

“That’s right,” said my unde. 

“But this one has done far more than that. 
Its owner walked on soil and rocks!” 

Again we examined the shoes and saw that 
what Goldansky said was true. 

“And then?” prompted my uncle. 

“The rest is obvious. Why wear the thing 
while walking on the ground? The answer is 
that there is no atmosphere above the ground. 
And where is there such a place?” 

Y UNCLE gave a shout as understand- 
ing burst upon him. 

“Why, they’re on the moon!” 

And I saw how possible it was. In those 
days we paid little or no attention to Earth’s 
dead child, hanging in the near heavens 
without air or water. Adventurers, scien- 
tists and cranks had made some small ex- 
plorations but there it ended. 

One of the few true benefits of the war 
was that we came to learn what great min- 
eral treasures our satellite held. Today 
citizens, mines and factories again bring life 
to its dead face. 

But the Martians, I knew, had not so rich 
and pleasant a world as ours. Long ago, 
pressed for expansion room, they had 
reached and settled their own two tiny 
moons, breathing artificial air in cities that 
were covered with mighty domes. 

What more natural than that they should 
see the possibility of similar use of our 
moon? The few hundred thousand miles to 
the earth could be traversed readily and 
quickly by fleets of small raiders, which 
could rain down destruction and escape to 
hiding again. 

“Let’s urge a punitive expedition at once,” 
said my uncle. 

“Not so fast,” said Atrim. “We’ll have to 
find their base first. Probably it is a small 
one, and the moon is large. The only thing 
of which we can be reasonably sure just now 
is that they are on the far side. The side to- 
ward us — always the same side, of course — 
would be too easily examined by telescope 
for their comfort.” 

“Better say nothing about this matter just 
now,” said my uncle. “The Martian spies — 
and the city is full of them — mustn’t guess 
that we know. Jack, do you mind leaving 
us while we discuss this affair? What you 
have heard is, I know, safe with you.” 

I rose, but Goldansky held up his hand. 

“Let the captain stay. I think, in fact, that 
he should know everything we say.” 

“Why so?” asked Atrim. 

“Because my suggestion is to send a single 
scout to find the headquarters of the Mar- 



STORIES 

tians. He can be swift and unobtrusive. 
They would be aware of a large force, but 
one man could find them and come away 
unseen — the more because they wouldn’t be 
looking for him.” 

“I agree with you,” said my unde. 

“I agree also, and see your point in keep- 
ing Stillwell’s nephew here,” added Atrim. 
“What man could be a better scout than he, 
with his knowledge of Martian affairs?” 

“Do you mean for me to be a spy, sir?” 
I asked Goldansky. 

“Not exactly. Just to find out all you can 
about the place, if it exists at all.” 

“It would be a glorious adventure,” said 
Atrim. 

“And a dangerous one,” supplemented 
Goldansky. 

“I hope that you don’t think my nephew 
will balk at danger,” put in my uncle. 

“Not in the least, but he should understand 
all the risks of the enterprise.” 

“Fd gladly go, sir,” I said. “I’m flattered 
that you think me worthy.” 

“Good man!” said Atrim, offering his hand. 

The greater part of the morning was spent 
in preparing for my dash. The moon, as 
Earth saw it, was new and therefore would 
be nearly full as observed from the far side. 
I studied exhaustively lunar maps and 
photographs and made copious notes. The 
space- ship which was selected for my use 
was a one-man observation craft. 

It was long, narrow and sharp-bowed, 
almost needle-like in proportions, with bare- 
ly enough cabin-room to accommodate one 
man, lying at full-length. Although it had 
no armament of any kind, its television and 
radio equipment was of the highest order 
and it was designed to achieve and hold 
tremendous speed. 

Before entering I donned a space-suit, all 
save the airtight metal helmet, which I placed 
in the cabin locker. This suit was of Mar- 
tian make, which, as it later turned out, was 
a piece of good fortune. In its pockets I put 
an automatic pistol, loaded with fifty shells. 
At a few minutes before noon I was ready to 
depart 

“Goodby, captain!” said Goldansky, wring- 
ing my gloved hand. 

“Take care of yourself!” this from Atrim. 

“God bless you, my boy,” was my uncle’s 
farewell. 

T STEPPED into the padded interior which, 
* as the ship was raised on its stern like 
an obelisk, held me upright. The panel 
closed, shutting out the three friendly faces. 
Before my eyes was the television apparatus, 
already set upon the disc of the moon. 

I touched the starter and, as my ship rose 
lightly from its moorings, shifted my fingers 




WHEN PLANETS CLASHED 



to the accelerator. Away I whipped, up, up 
into the blue, until I was past Earth’s atmo- 
spheric envelope. Once in space, I increased 
to full speed and turned my eyes to where, 
on the screen, the moon bulked larger and 
larger with the passing minutes. 

My craft seemed to hang motionless upon 
nothing. A glance out of the ports showed 
the starry black of space. Below my feet was 
the silvery full disc of Earth. Only the fig- 
ures on my speed dials showed the breath- 
taking clip at which I was traveling; only 
the ticking of instruments and the rustle of 
my own movements broke the utter silence 
of my flight. 

Some three hours after my journey began, 
with the face of the moon nearly filling my 
forward port, I cut down my speed. At a 
reduced pace I swung around the satellite’s 
' brightest edge. Its lightest portion changed 
from the shape of a sickle to that of a cres- 
cent, that grew and grew until, drawing close 
to it, I found myself sliding along a few miles 
above a bleak, mountainous region. 

The topmost peaks, I knew, were far higher 
than any on Earth. Swiftly crossing them, I 
next skimmed along above a plain, hundreds 
of miles in extent. In one or two places 
there seemed to be straight furrows or 
ditches, full of shadows, that bore some re- 
semblance to the smaller canals of Mars. My 
thoughts, going back to the waterways of 
that far planet, conjured up a vision of their 
own volition. 

Once more I seemed to see Yann’s lovely 
face, clouded around with dark hair, while 
she bade me to do my part in the war. 
Could she have foreseen my present task, 
would she still have counseled me so? I 
sighed, all alone in my hurrying shell. Then, 
slowing down until I floated almost motion- 
less, I pondered the problem of my search. 

I had to cover as much as possible of the 
moon’s surface, and that within a very short 
time. The best plan, as I saw it, was to head 
for the center of the lighted area, mount to 
a position some fifty miles above ground, 
and there begin a spiral journey, watching 
the landscape through television. 

Of course, there was the chance that the 
Martian force, wherever it was, might dis- 
cover me first; but, since they were many 
and large and I was one and small, that 
chance was a slim one. And, even if they 
swarmed out after me, that by itself would 
show me where they were. Such knowledge 
once mine, I would trust to my craft’s heels 
to give me a chance to make use of it. 

Soon, therefore, I was travelling in an 
ever-increasing circle over the silent 
'Stretches. What appearance the Martian 
raiders’ base would take I did not know, but 
I was sure that any movement or incon- 



77 

grulty would be triply noticeable in the 
ghostly stillness below. 

I flew over plains, over mighty mountain 
ranges and quiet valleys. The landscapes 
were as uncanny as those that arise in 
dreams. Often some strange sight impelled 
me to drop down for closer inspection, but 
never did I find traces of men or their works. 

Hours passed. My chronometer, set in St 
Louis, registered close to six o’clock. An- 
other night would soon ride down upon my 
home — a night which might again bring the 
raiders — and I had not found their den as 
yet! 

But just at that moment the television 
screen showed me something that brought my 
hands, all trembling, to correct the focus and 
clarify the image. 

It showed me the interior of a crater, one 
of those that so plentifully pit the lunar sur- 
face. In it lay a dull-gleaming object of 
metal, cigar-shaped and evidently of great 
size. It was a Martian space-ship! 

I glanced at my instruments, quickly cal- 
culated the crater’s position, and fairly 
hurtled toward it. Unless a close lookout 
was being kept, aided by instruments for 
artificial vision, my little craft would appear 
only as a momentary flash of light. I there- 
fore shot fearlessly to the very slope of the 
crater and then, after hovering for a moment, 
found a deep fissure into which I could lower 
my ship. 

The shadows of the moon are as deep and 
black as pools of ink, for, with no atmosphere 
to diffuse the sun’s rays, there is no refracted 
light. Therefore, when I had fastened on my 
helmet, emerged and mounted to the lip of 
the crack, I could not distinguish my vessel 
a few feet beneath me. 

TPHE heat was terrific, even in my insulated 
space-suit Yet I scrambled easily to the 
crater’s edge, my Earth-trained muscles 
readily adjusting themselves to the reduced 
force of lunar gravity. Cautiously hiding be- 
hind a projecting rock, I peeped into the great 
depression below. 

Thunder! What a space-ship! 

The television had given me no definite 
idea as to the true size of the Martian craft. 
Now, looking directly down upon it, I was 
stunned by its vastness. It was fully a mile in 
length, and its greatest width, at the center, 
was perhaps 3<M) yards or slightly less. It 
tapered to a blunt point at either end. 

In its interior must have been room for 
the laying out of a city, for the housing of 
regiments. Here and there on its upper sur- 
face bulged turrets and ports for observa- 
tion, for weapons, for instruments. Along its 
sides were lines of air-locks for the passage 
of men — a few of them were moving around 




78 STARTLING STORIES 



near the ship, specklike by comparison — or 
for smaller vessels. 

Ill what secrecy had the monster been 
conceived and built? At what cost and labor 
was it operated? And how to conquer and 
destroy it? 

With a growing ehill of despair, I realized 
that no combat organization now in service 
with the World League could hope to van- 
quish so mighty a war vessel. Even a glance 
showed that, for offense and defense, it was 
equipped to a magnitude hitherto undreamed 
of. 

It could spot a Terrestrial fleet and wipe it 
out at long range. Even our disintegrater 
rays would make small impress on its mas- 
sive shell. My scouting expedition had 
availed little, after all. The thing was in- 
vulnerable! 

Then a new thought came. Invulnerable, 
yes, as regarded assault from the outside. 
But might not a man find his way into it, 
and from there do much? I wore a Martian 
space-suit and was familiar with Martian 
manners. It was worth trying. 

Boldly I stepped out from behind my rocks 
and began to descend the inner precipice. 



CHAPTER III 

Within the Ship 



V REACHED the floor of the crater short- 
® ly and made my way toward the big ship 
where it towered aloft nearly a thousand 
feet. My path took me past groups of Mar- 
tians in space-suits similar to mine, working 
in caves and pits. 

They were digging up various minerals and 
putting them in bags and containers, while 
other groups carried these toward the ship. 
My presence seemed to create no interest, 
and so I joined one silent detail of carriers 
headed for an air-lock. 

The leader rapped out a signal, on the 
lock panel, which swung open and admitted 
us. We passed through the lock chamber and 
I found myself in a busy corridor which, as 
I walked down it, gave in turn onto a larger 
one. The walls and the ceiling were of dull 
metal plating while the floors were covered 
with some material that eased the feet and 
deadened sound. 

Throngs of Martians, uniformed or in 
space-suits, moved hither and thither in or- 
dered haste. Now and then a small vehicle 
with three or four wheels moved down the 
center of the passageway. 

On either hand, I saw, the metal partitions 
were pierced with panels, and some of these 
were open to disclose offices, machine-shops, 



eating-rooms or apartments, just as on a city 
street. 

Already the carrying party to which I had 
attached myself had disappeared. Unship- 
ping my helmet and slinging it to my belt, I 
looked around. At first glance I would still 
pass for a Martian and no man paid me any 
attention, but on the other hand I felt as 
though I were wandering aimlessly. I had 
gained the inside of the ship; how was I to 
take advantage of my position? 

With an effort at a casual manner I hailed 
a passer-by and asked him where to find the 
office of the commander. 

He stopped and looked at me queerly. He 
was a black-browed fellow in the uniform 
of a sub-bomber. 

“What commander do you mean?” he 
asked. 

“Who but the commander of this craft, 
friend?” I returned. 

“And do you not know? Answer me 
that!” 

“Why answer to such as you?” I said, af- 
fecting haughtiness and turning away from 
his disquieting questions. But he shouted to 
other Martians, who hurried up. In a mo- 
ment I found myself surrounded. 

“What’s this?” sternly demanded an officer 
in the uniform of a flight commander, who 
had been attracted by the ripple of excite- 
ment. 

“He asks strange questions, sir,” said the 
sub-bomber respectfully, “and he doesn’t 
answer the ones I ask. I don’t know him or 
his rank. If I spoke sharply to him, it was 
because I thought I should.” 

“You have done well,” answered the of- 
ficer, observing me narrowly. “By the cut of 
his hair this man is a Terrestrial.” 

“By birth only,” I offered quickly, “I have 
never espoused the cause of Earth. I’m a 
deserter these six hours.” 

“Deserter? Here?” 

“I stole a space-ship.” 

“And why did you come to this place?” 
“To join you.” 

“You knew that we were posted here?" he 
queried sharply. “Not even our families on 
Mars know that — only a few officers in high 
places. Where did you get your knowledge?” 
“I came on a wild guess.” 

“That is a spy’s tale,” he said scornfully. 
“If you were a real deserter, you’d have 
given yourself up a prisoner outside and 
wouldn’t have sneaked into our corridors.” 

It was plain to see that my case was a sorry 
one and I racked my brain for more plausible 
lies to tell him. He sneered as he saw my 
confusion. 

“Such zeal for a new cause is touching. 
The only trouble is that the whole story is 
too far out of focus. We aren’t romanticist* 
here, my Terrestrial friend. If you can't be 




79 



WHEN PLANETS CLASHED 



more convincing you’ll be dead before an- 
other day has passed.” 

He turned to the others. 

“Make him fast. He’s going to prison.” 

The black-browed bomber seized one of 
my arms and another Martian stepped up to 
help. For a moment I contemplated fierce 
resistance, but I knew how useless that would 
be. Already others were gathering around, 
and nearly all of them were armed. I re- 
signed myself to this reversal of fortune, just 
as another officer, wearing the insignia of a 
staff member, pushed through to us. 

The flight commander saluted, Martian 
fashion, with a slight quick bow and both 
hands brought smartly to the forehead. 

“We’ve captured a spy, sir,” he said. 

His superior turned toward me and my 
heart began to race like a motor. 

It was Nalo! 

A delighted smile lit up the handsome face 
of my old friend as, with a shout of wel- 
come recognition, he sprang forward and 
threw his arms around me. 

“Chac! Chac!” he cried. “I never thought 
to see you so soon! What are you doing 
here with us?” 

“As I tried to explain,” I stammered, “I 
deserted the Terrestrials and came here by 
chance.” 

“Of course! Of course! How fortunate that 
you should do so!” 

UE ADDRESSED the others. 

“I’ll assume responsibility for this 
man,” he said, “and myself will turn him 
over to the commander’s office. I trust him, 
for he was long a resident of Mars and is not 
in sympathy with those who brought on the 
war. Is that sufficient for you?” 

“It is sufficient,” said the flight comman- 
der a little glumly, as he saluted and walked 
away with the others. 

“And what will happen when I go to the 
commander’s office?” I asked Nalo when we 
were alone.” 

He laughed loudly. 

“As if I would permit it? Heavens, Chac, 
are you not well out of this war? Forget it, 
with its foolishness and its horror. May all 
others learn to despise it as I do! No, you 
will be my guest here, no more. When the 
war is over — and it will be at the next oppo- 
sition of the planets — you will go back with 
me to Mars, won’t you? And there you will 
see Yann again!” 

To see Yann again! And her brother Nalo, 
who promised me that, was one of the 
raiders whose destruction I was sworn to 
accomplish! I choked in emotion and Nalo, 
prince that he was, thought I was sobbing 
with joy. 

“I’m very close to crying myself, Chac,” he 
said gently. “Come, my apartment is near 



this place.” 

We went up by a lift and thence to his 
quarters. There I doffed the space-suit and 
my Terrestrial garments, while he gave me a 
plain Martian uniform from his own ward- 
robe. 

“Lucky fellow!” he said as I pulled on the 
tunic. “No more war for you, ever!” 

His words made me feel unutterably guilty 
as I stealthily retrieved my automatic pistol 
from the pocket of my discarded space-suit 
and tucked it out of sight in the waistband 
of my new costume. 

He was delightedly ready to accept the 
story I told to explain how I had come to 
the moon. When I was fully dressed we 
walked out together, he chattering the while 
about this vast and wonderful mother-ship 
that was the raiders’ headquarters. 

It was manned, he said, by nearly 200,000 
picked men, and in its hangars were a thou- 
sand swift combat ships. Nearly a hundred 
levels were included between its top and its 
base. The lives of its tremendous crew were 
supported by chemically produced foods, 
water and air, all successfully made on Mars 
for centuries. 

“Such a vessel could conquer the world,” 
I said. 

“Not for a moment, Chac,” laughed Nalo. 
“Its very size makes that impossible. Why, 
it couldn’t be operated inside Earth’s gravity 
pull — no, not if it was but half the size. The 
engines had all that they could to lift it away 
from Mars, where it encountered but one- 
third of Earth’s gravity. Here on the moon, 
where an Earthman weighs but a sixth of 
what he does at home it is slow and clumsy 
enough. No, it is only a movable fort, a sort 
of hive for the little raiders.” 

He sent for food and we ate together in 
private. Then he left to attend to some of 
his duties as a member of the mother-ship’s 
staff, leaving me to wander about freely. 

Nalo’s attitude made my task at once easy 
and hard. I was roving through the cor- 
ridors, a Martian in appearance, able to view 
all the secret workings of the craft; but all 
this I did with a heavy heart, for only Nalo’s 
friendly belief that I meant no harm had 
made it possible. 

I hardened my resolve. I had been en- 
trusted with a mission, and I must carry it 
through. My hand, and my hand alone, could 
halt the Martian raids on my native planet. 
Determined but downcast, I returned at last 
to Nalo’s quarters. He was waiting for me. 

“Back already?” he said. “I thought you 
would find enough to keep you interested 
for days.” 

“But I understand so little of what is going 
on, and I’m afraid to ask.” 

"I’ll explain to you. Staff meeting’s over. 




80 STARTLING STORIES 



They’re discussing the new raid on Earth.” 

“New raid?” I repeated. “Are they raiding 
again tonight?” 

“You mean, of course, the night that is now 
ran Earth. The lunar night won’t be upon us 
for ever so long. No, they’ll wait twenty- 
four of your hours and then shove off. It 
wouldn’t do to have the raids too close to- 
gether.” 

“Where will they attack?” I asked. 

“Oh, Chicago and Omaha this time, to de- 
stroy factories for the building of space- 
ships. But why should you worry? The war 
is nothing to you, nor to me for the time be- 
ing. I’m more interested in making a night 
of it We have theaters, cafes, and there are 
three or four officers you’ll remember. 
Shan’t we have them in?” 

“Not just yet, Nalo,” I said, speaking slow- 
ly to control my voice, which was perilously 
near to breaking. “I’d much rather just visit 
all parts of the car.” 

“As you say. Where shall we go first?” 

“Is it possible to see the atmosphere 
plant?” 

“Absolutely. Come along.” 

His rank was sufficient passport to the sen- 
tinel who guarded the doorway to the small 
but complex laboratory. Inside, the work- 
ers showed us the machinery, the plans 
of the system, the control boards that hur- 
ried the air’s circulation or shut it off, and 
the levers that could, if necessary, be oper- 
ated to open big valves and exhale gases 
from the structure. 

“These levers work thousands of vents," 
said Nalo. “As you can imagine, they can be 
put into many combinations. Don’t touch 
them. You might evict the air from some 
apartment or corridor, and possibly it would 
cause trouble.” 

“But if all the master levers were thrown 
wide?” I asked. 

“Then every gaseous substance in the 
whole car would be gone in about ten winks,” 
said the supervisor of the plant. 

“I see. If something went wrong, it might 
kill everyone.” 

“Not as bad as that. At the first hint of 
trouble with the apparatus, these automatic 
alarms would sound throughout the ship. 
There are space-suits in each apartment, 
and the men would quickly don them. Then 
they would be safe until all was running 
smoothly again.” 

We left, Nalo talking gaily, myself quiet 
and preoccupied. At last I knew how to do 
my duty. 

WT WAS late when we returned to my 
friend’s quarters. Nalo still wanted to in- 
vite our acquaintances in, but I begged him 
not to do so. I could not have stood it. 



At last we lay down on separate pallets 
and I kept quiet until Nalo’s breathing be- 
came measured in sleep. Then I carefully 
arose and donned my space-suit. The auto- 
matic I transferred again to the outside 
pocket I searched until I located the exhal- 
ing valve which, according to the men at the 
atmosphere laboratories, was to be found in 
every apartment. This I carefully blocked 
with wadded cloth. Then I left, closing the 
panel tightly after me. 

The lights were dimmed in the corridors 
and few persons were afoot I went un- 
challenged to a lift which took me to the level 
of the laboratoi’y. There I approached its 
doorway to find, as I had expected, a vigilant 
sentry on guard. 

Unhesitatingly I walked toward him until 
he presented his automatic rifle and called on 
me to halt 

“Let me in,” I said, the radio attachment 
in the helmet making my voice audible. “I 
have a message for the superintendent.” 

“Have you a permit?” he asked warily. 

“Certainly,” I answered, taking from my 
pocket a folded paper. As he reached for it 
I suddenly sprang upon him. With one hand 
I grasped his throat shutting off his cry of 
surprise and with the other I twisted his 
weapon from his grasp and flung it up tha 
corridor. 

Then, clenching my fist inside the heavy, 
metal-jointed glove, I struck him a heavy 
blow on the jaw. He dropped without a 
sound. Leaping over Mm as he rolled sense- 
less at my feet, I pulled aside the panel of the 
laboratory, stepped in, and pulled it shut 
after me. 

Half a dozen men were working inside. I 
quickly approached the air-forming machin- 
ery. The first of the workers to look up 
seemed to catch the menace in my attitude 
for, with an exclamation, he made for the 
alarm apparatus. 

I snatched my automatic from my pocket 
and shot Mm dead in his tracks, hurrying 
forward as another dashed to take his place. 
We met in front of the instrument and, even 
as his hand was stretched out to press the 
button and warn all the thousands in the 
mother-ship, I brought the heavy barrel of 
my gun down on Ms head. 

He slumped to the floor wMle I grasped 
the board to wMch the alarm mechanism was 
bolted and, exerting all my strength, tore it 
from its fastenings. A spark of blue flickered 
and died as the electric connections parted. 
It was wrecked. 

Three of the others had drawn their guns. 
They now fired at me, all at once, but all 
three bullets, by some good fortune, missed 
me. The fourth man darted for the panel 
that led to the corridors. 




81 



WHEN PLANETS CLASHED 



I aimed and pressed the trigger. No re- 
port! The blow that I had struck with my 
automatic had somehow jammed it. 

Desperately I hurled the gun. It crashed 
against the back of his head as he ran, and 
he fell to his hands and knees, stunned. Now 
I was arrayed, empty-handed, against three 
desperate Martians, all armed. I quickly knelt 
to fumble for whatever weapons might be 
on the person of the man I had knocked away 
from the alarms. 

That quick move downward must have 
saved my life for, at the same moment, all 
three fired again, then rushed me. As it was, 
* one bullet grazed my helmet with a deafen- 
ing rasp, and it would certainly have pierced 
me had I been standing. 

I stood up as the trio closed in and, catch- 
ing the nearest one around the waist, swung 
him from his feet and hurled him against his 
fellows. The three rolled, shouting, on the 
floor, together while leaping onto the squirm- 
ing pile, I stamped and kicked as I knew how. 

I planted a heel upon a skull and felt its 
owner subside. Another man rose to his 
knees, but went down again as I kicked him 
behind the ear. I sprang away and made for 
the levers that controlled the exhalation of 
the tremendous ship. 

One man staggered to his feet and tackled 
me around the knees. Down we clattered, 
while he tried to stab me with a dagger. Its 
blade glanced from a metal rivet in my 
space-suit and a moment later I caught and 
twisted his arm until he dropped the blade. 

Still he fought to keep me from the levers. 
My strength, developed on Earth, was more 
than twice his, but he was unhampered by a 
space -suit and nearly made up the difference 
in desperation. Through my helmet’s gog- 
gles I could see his distorted face, now close, 
now receding, and today it remains the clear- 
est memory of that fight in the laboratory. 

For half a minute we wrestled and I could 
not shake him off. Stern knocking sounded 
at the door. Then it partially opened. At 
the same time I managed to twist the fingers 
of my left hand in my adversary’s hair and 
jerk his head forward. Raising my right 
metal-lined hand high, I chopped him on the 
back of the neck with its edge. He collapsed 
and I twisted out of his grip. 

At the door appeared a throng of Martians, 
most of them with weapons of various sorts. 
Astonishment halted them momentarily, else 
assuredly I would have been struck down. 
But already I had reached my objective. One 
master level I pulled— another— another and 
another, until all were thrown wide. 

A sudden gust of wind seemed to shriek 
in the room and in the corridor beyond. The 
men at the door fell in a writhing heap. A 
strange black exultation, that had nothing of 



joy swelled in me. 

I had succeeded in my mission. 



CHAPTER IV 
Traitor! 



A HEAVY wrench was on a stand nearby. 

I grabbed it and attacked the air -form- 
ing machinery. At my first blow it rattled. 
A few more strokes stopped it entirely. Then 
I ran back to the master levers and so ham- 
mered and bent them that it would take some 
time and labor to move them from their posi- 
tion. This done, I sprang over the tortured 
forms at the door and ran up the corridor. 

Everywhere, as far as I could see, lay dead 
and dying Martians. Singly and two and 
three deep they lay, silent or quivering, 
along my pathway. But I found a lift and 
quickly dropped it to the floor where Nalo 
was quartered. But a few seconds more found 
me at his apartment, from which, despite my 
precautions, air was escaping. Entering, I 
saw him gasping on the floor. 

“Nalo!” I cried. “Up, man, there’s no time 
to lose!” 

I lifted him up and reached for his space - 
suit where it hung on the wall. He looked at 
me uncomprehendingly. 

“Why, Chac? What has happened?” 

“I’ve wrecked the atmosphere plant, Nalo,” 
I said. “No matter how — I did it. I had to do 
it. But I can’t let you die like the rest of 
them. Here, get into this suit.” 

He shook himself free and staggered away, 
supporting himself against the wall. 

“Wrecked the plant, Chac? You? That’s a 
lie— you wouldn’t.” 

“But I did. Everybody is dying and, if you 
don’t hurry, you’ll die, too. Come!” 

He struck my hands away. 

“No help from you, you false friend!” he 
cried. “Now you have made me a traitor as 
well!” 

He collapsed to the floor, his senses all but 
gone. My heart went cold as I knelt and 
pulled the suit onto him. He feebly resisted, 
but the effort took the last of his strength. I 
fastened the helmet onto his senseless head 
and let in some oxygen. 

Unconsciously, his lungs drew in the life- 
giving element. I raised him and laid him on 
the pallet. Later, when my work was fin- 
ished, I would return and save him. He 
would have to forgive me. 

But other problems still presented them- 
selves. In the corridors moved a few men 
who had been able to don their space-suits 
before it was too late. Perhaps they would 




STARTLING STORIES 



82 

find a way to recover their mighty craft, to 
prepare it and once more menace my planet. 
I must totally disable the mother-ship. 

The lifts were stalled, and I ran up one 
flight of stairs after another until I came to 
the apartment where the radio-bomb con- 
trols were located. 

Before me was a television apparatus. With 
its aid I sent one bomb after another roving 
through corridors and shafts. The first went 
to destroy the steering apparatus, the second 
to wreck the engineroom, the third to com- 
plete the work I had done in the air-forming 
laboratory. Last of all I directed one to a 
magazine aft, where a great store of bombs 
was kept. 

A moment later the mighty ship trembled 
in every atom with the explosion. The ship 
would be utterly unfit for movement now, I 
knew. My final act was to turn my automatic 
upon the bomb controls themselves and, with 
a series of careful shots, put them out of com- 
mission. Satisfied, I again descended to the 
level of Nalo’s apartment and entered. 

The detonation of the magazine had torn 
metal beams from the ceiling. Two of them 
pinned him down on his pallet. With the 
strength of anguish I lifted them away. Too 
late! His back was broken. 

But his dead face was no longer stamped 
with an expression of hate, as when I had 
last seen it When he had died, loathing for 
me had not been with him. Tears ran down 
my cheeks and fogged the glass goggles of 
my helmet as I gazed upon the body of my 
friend and knew that at the last Nalo had 
found it in his heart to forgive me. 

I turned away and, descending to the low- 
est levels, found an air-lock. I crept through 
this like some noisome creature and walked 
away from that colossal and stricken hulk. 
A little knot of Martians in space-suits sig- 
nalled to me from the distance, but I mount- 
ed the inside wall of the crater unheedingly. 

At the top I looked back once at the 
wrecked mother-ship. Truly, it would never 
again send out and receive raiders of the 
Earth. 

After a brief moment of searching, I lo- 
cated my hidden vehicle. Once inside, I 
swiftly soared away on the road back. I took 
off my helmet and, tossing it aside, caught a 
reflection of my face in the dark, idle glass 
screen of the television. It was haggard, 
burning-eyed, sorrowful as death. My ex- 
perience had wrought a deep and indelible 
change in me. 

And that was the end of my adventure, 
the adventure which, in the minds of many, 
gives me an outstanding place among the 
individual heroes of the Interplanetary War. 
Yet neither then nor ever afterward could I 
find it possible to rejoice that it was I who 



wrecked the mother-ship of tire Martian 
raiders. 

T WAS apathetic enough when I arrived at 
the St. Louis rocketport in the early 
morning. Before I was through checking in 
my ship, the three men who had sent me 
came rushing up. 

Goldansky was congratulatory, Atrim full 
of questions and my uncle, almost clairvoyant 
in his sympathy with me, sensed my feelings 
and said little in front of the others. We two 
strolled away to his office at last, while I 
told him the whole story. When I had finished 
he clasped my hand. 

“I’m proud of you, Jack,” he said. “No man 
could have had a harder time of it. But I 
know that you don’t care to talk any more 
about it.” 

“I don’t, uncle.” 

“Then let’s stick to shop. You know, of 
course, that you’re to lead a combat group 
back to the Martian base.” 

“So I understand.” 

An orderly appeared with a communica- 
tion from the High Command. The general 
officers of the Terrestrial forces had heard of 
my feat and were offering their congratula- 
tions. Soon they proposed to entertain me. In 
the meantime secrecy must be observed, until 
the Martians power on the moon was blotted 
out forever. 

At first there had been talk of repairing 
and garrisoning the enormous shell which I 
had partially destroyed, but this plan was 
swiftly discarded. Late in the afternoon of 
that same day, I once more took to space, this 
time in the cabin of a squadron commander’s 
ship. 

It was easy to lead the expedition to the 
scene of my late conquest. We swooped 
down like a flock of vultures, taking up posi- 
tions on the flanks of the mighty hulk. Some 
few survivors in space-suits came forward 
eagerly to surrender as our party entered 
the air-locks. 

These prisoners were questioned thor- 
oughly. They readily told our officers that 
the mother-ship represented the one Martian 
base on the moon, and they also served as 
guides throughout the airless corridors. 

A number of the smaller raiding ships were 
found to be in fair running order, and these 
were manned and loaded with all that could 
be salvaged. Then, with explosives and dis- 
integrator rays, wrecking parties set to work 
on the structure. For hours they labored, 
and in the end the mighty mother-ship was 
utterly wrecked, no longer fit as a menace 
or a threat to Earth. 

I took part in none of this. My only act, 
after .guiding the expedition to the spot, was 
to find and carry out the body of Nalo, to 




83 



WHEN PLANETS CLASHED 



take the remains back with me. 

When we returned, and not until then, the 
news was broadcast throughout the earth 
that the Martian marauders had been obli- 
terated. Loud was the noise of thankful 
celebration and I feel sure that every person 
loyal to the Terrestrial cause took part in 
it — all save myself. 

For I was concerned with Nalo’s funeral. 
His body was burned and the ashes scat- 
tered, according to Martian usage. His belt, 
his automatic pistol and half a dozen memen- 
toes I put away in a locker. So long as they 
exist, they will recall memories of a gallant 
and too-faithful friend. 

Goaded and stimulated, the manufacturers 
of fighting equipment speeded up their work, 
and preparation went on throughout the re- 
mainder of the year. The resources and 
labors of the entire earth were expended to 
build thousands of space-ships, to equip, 
maintain and train the millions of men 
needed to meet the Martians when the final 
battle came. Come it would, every Terrestrial 
knew. And then there would be as tremen- 
dous, as awful a conflict as mortal creatures 
ever saw. 

It is not for me to discuss the policy of 
Martian commanders in sending four sep- 
arate forces to attack Earth, instead of com- 
bining them into one. Some commentators 
have stated that the Martians made er- 
roneous calculation for the joining of those 
forces in space. Others claim that they 
hoped to split and destroy separately the 
Terrestrial combat groups. And there have 
been rumors of misinterpreted orders and 
similar blunders. 

However, those who really know — the 
officers who launched the Martian attack in 
the winter of 2676 — have remained silent to 
a man. Until they speak, the curious must 
whistle for an explanation. I, for one, cannot 
give it. 

In late November of the year 2676, scouts 
and radio brought news that a tremendous 
combat group had left the enemy planet, 
now approaching opposition, and was mak- 
ing for Earth at top speed. 

The number of Martian craft, large and 
small, was estimated at 300,000. They were 
granted some eighty days in which to come 
within striking distance of Earth. So formid- 
able a fighting organization had never be- 
fore existed, save on paper, and in the story- 
books of the pre-Atomic Age. 

But we Terrestrials, knowing that our 
ready forces numbered more than twice as 
many ships, were not panicky. We were 
more interested and serious at the news that 
came early in December, when a second 
Martian group, similar in size and makeup to 
the first, was reported en route to Earth. 



SHORTLY before Christmas orders came 
^ directing all Terrestrial combat units to 
stand ready for clearing on the first of Feb- 
ruary. At that time we totaled 700,000 craft, 
ranging in size from mighty dreadnoughts 
of space to fleet scouts that held no more 
than five or six men. The crews that would 
serve and fight these ships mustered fully 
forty million. These forces represented the 
wealth of a world and the flower of its man- 
hood. 

A vast armada! But in the first week in 
January a third mighty mass of Martians was 
reported on the way. A desperate and almost 
even fight seemed assured, with the advan- 
tage on the side of the enemy. Everywhere 
one heard laughing and joking, forced out 
to hide the real concern which grew steadily 
as the jumping-off date approached. 

During the last week of January, I re- 
ceived orders to report for active duty on 
the campaign. In the event of our landing 
on Mars, I was to help in establishing Intel- 
ligence Department headquarters there. My 
assignment was to the ship of Flight Com- 
mander Putnam, who headed a group of the 
swiftest combat ships of the entire service. 

I quickly made friends with him and with 
the juniors officers of his ship — Captain Fer- 
man, in charge of the ray-guns, and Captain 
Sughrue, chief of engineers and flight me- 
chanics. Both were young men, about my 
own age, and inclined to view the coming 
struggle in the light of an exciting adven- 
ture. 

They showed me how well equipped was 
their craft and its consorts for flight, speed 
and observation. Their only wish was for 
Martians on which to demonstrate their 
prowess. 

We cleared from St. Louis, together with 
a thousand other ships. All over Earth rocket- 
ports saw mighty swarms of ships take to 
space. Once outside the limits of the atmo- 
sphere, we speeded up and drew into our 
appointed position, keeping contact with 
foreign units on either hand. 

“Russians to the right,” said the veteran 
Putnam, indicating the positions of our 
neighbors in one of the television screens. 
“Stout fellows and great space-wranglers, 
those boys. Our greatest speed engineers 
have been Russian— Manvelsky, Popoff, 
Schoeneckoff and the rest The pioneers were 
Martians, of course, but they had little to 
teach these chaps.” 

“And who have we to the left?” asked 
Ferman. 

“Chinese, I think,” answered the comman- 
der, bending his grizzled head close to the 
screen. “They’re good men to have along on 
this sort of business. Wide-awake, tricky, 
brave as the bravest.” 




STARTLING STORIES 



84 

He turned dials 10 clarity the image. “That 
nearest flight belongs to Wu Ting Fang. I 
know him well. His men are perhaps as 
clever with ray-guns as you’ll see.” 

“No more so than my Missourians, PH bet,” 
said Ferman quickly. 

“I hope yours are as good, captain,” re- 
plied his superior. “There will be need for 
all their skill.” 

Our ships moved at an easy pace that day, 
and the next day, and the next. Our com- 
manders proposed to operate on the defen- 
sive at first, with the Martians engaging us 
at a great distance from their own bases. 
Both machinery and morale would suffer 
from the long journey, went the argument, 
and a stiff resistance would be doubly ef- 
fective. 

I am sure the battle would have gone 
according to our calculations had the oppos- 
ing forces remained as we figured them when 
we jumped off. But, on the morning of the 
fourth day, an orderly came from the radio 
locker to hand Commander Putnam a slip 
of paper. 

The officer’s face became stern when he 
read it. 

“Gentlemen,” he said to the three of us 
as we looked at him in surprised concern, 
“this is bad. A final group of Martians has 
just cleared.” 

“How large?” I asked. 

“As large as the others, it says here.” 

Sughrue silently made a rapid calcula- 
tion. 

“Lord! They have one million two hun- 
dred thousand ships in space this moment!” 
he groaned. 

“They could trade us ship for ship and still 
have half a million left with which to sack 
the cities of Earth!” added Ferman in 
equally gloomy tones. “Even at that, they 
may have more to come.” 

“It’s not as bad as it seems,” said the com- 
mander. “Our ships are faster and better 
manned than theirs, and we’re far better 
armed. These ray-guns will do a great deal 
toward evening the odds.” 

It was small comfort, but it served to 
recall the two junior officers to better spirits. 
The news was relayed to other ships of the 
flight, while we in the commander’s ship 
wondered what change this latest threat 
might make necessary in our plans and our 
fate. 

We had not long to wonder. 

The radio orderly appeared soon after this 
with another slip. 

Putnam eagerly scanned it, then held it out 
to us. 

“We’re not on the defensive, after all,” he 
said. “We’re going to meet and attack the 
first Martian combat group!” 



CHAPTER V 
Earth Smites 



JkGAIN the news w r as passed along and 
* * Sughrue scampered away to his engines. 
In a moment we shot forward at an increased 
clip. The television showed our neighbors on 
all quarters closing rapidly, and the whole 
force concentrating. 

“What’s our new policy?” asked Ferman. 

“A simple and logical one,” said Putnam. 
“Our position is that of a giant who could 
conquer me alone, or you, or Stillwell, or 
Sughrue, alone. If the four of us rushed him 
at once, however, we could finish him easily. 
His best plan, therefore, would be to meet 
and defeat us singly. 

“We are a single force of seven-hundred- 
thousand ships. The Martians outnumber 
us, but they are divided into four groups, 
millions of miles apart. We’re fast-mov- 
ing and hard-hitting. If we can tackle them 
singly, we have a good chance of cleaning 
them all up, a group at a time, or at least 
crippling them so that they won’t present a 
menace to Earth.” 

“In the meantime, what happens to us?” 
I inquired. 

“In the meantime, my boy, you have one 
chance in I don’t know how many of ever 
seeing St. Louis again.” 

Sughrue, back from the engines, called us 
to the television apparatus. 

“The Martians!” he cried. 

In the screen was the image of a cloud of 
glittering specks against a black sky, like a 
strange new star-cluster. 

“Martians, sure enough,” agreed the com- 
mander. “The sun shines on them, making 
them visible to us. That must be the first 
group.” He quickly checked up some figures 
on a movable scale. “They can’t be so much 
as six hours away.” 

Radio messages came, bearing commands 
to stand by and prepare for action. Our 
screen showed the Martians shifting to open 
formation. Other, larger specks of light 
moved into our field of vision. 

“Those are ships of our own advance 
parties, far ahead,” said Putnam. “Look — 
there’s the flash of a ray gun. They’re open- 
ing the game.” 

He turned to the radio orderly. 

“What have you now? Well, thank God, 
here’s our order to join in. Full speed ahead, 
Sughrue. We’re going to get our feet wet!” 

It seemed no more than moments until 
Ferman, with the guns forward, shouted that 
the Martians were within range. At almost 




WHEN PLANETS CLASHED 85 



the same time, the floor beneath me gave a 
sharp lurch. 

“What’s that?” I asked, staggering to keep 
my balance. 

'“That’s Sughrue,” replied Putnam, holding 
on by a rail. “He was snapping us out of 
the way of a roving bomb.” He spoke into a 
microphone. “Well, Ferman?” 

“The Martians are jumpy, too,” came back 
Ferman’s voice. “One big fellow is skipping 
away from us like a dog playing with the 
water from a garden hose. 

“Whup!” he laughed exultantly. “We’ve 
put the finger on him!” 

The television showed me half a dozen 
duels between members of our flight and 
Martians. Putnam, scanning the screen with 
practiced eye rushed a series of radio or- 
ders to various ship commanders. 

They must have been very good orders 
indeed, for in a few moments our flight had 
accounted for twelve enemy ships and was 
driving away all others for some little dis- 
tance around, while only two of our craft 
were lost 

“We’ve got ’em on the run!” Ferman’s 
voice was crying. 

“Because they weren't Class A fighters,” 
said Putnam. “I’m glad it wasn’t worse. 
Orderly! Radio my compliments to Captain 
Janecki commanding Number Seven. Call 
his attention to Number Six, hit by Martians. 
Tell him to go aboard and see if he can put 
her in the running order again. Well need 
her.” 

In the meantime the battle was raging at a 
little distance in our front and on both flanks. 
Our superior numbers and armament 
counted heavily. Television glimpses showed 
Martians falling back on every hand, their 
ranks badly depleted. 

“What now, sir?” asked Sughrue’s voice, 
microphoned from the engine-room. 

“Pursuit, orders say,” answered Putnam. 
“Full speed ahead again.” 

Our flight rapidly overtook a group of 
retreating Martians. I went forward to Fer- 
man’s ray-guns, and through the target- 
finders saw one, then another enemy craft 
explode to nothingness. 

“Better for them if they’d stop and fight,” 
said the young captain. “Humph, that’s just 
what they’re going to do! Look at the boys in 
our flight. There are Numbers Nine, Twelve 
and Thirteen, all tying in. Now the others. 

“Fifteen’s hit. Too bad — not quick enough 
to dodge that roving bomb. Man, how the 
ray-guns are coming through!” 

Again the Martians were melting all along 
the way. Yet their resistance was not in 
vain. In some places, we learned, they gave 
fully as good as they received before retreat- 
ing. At last the order was sent along to 



proceed at a reduced pace, letting the frag- 
ments of the enemy group make their escape. 

Our own flight of thirty vessels had lost 
but three, while nowhere in our immediate 
neighborhood had our companion flights lost 
heavily. In the meantime, orders from die 
High Command were received in which all 
Terrestrial units were praised for the speed 
and dispatch shown in adminstering defeat 
to the enemy. 

“If the others are as easily beaten as that, 
it’ll be a picnic,” grinned Sughrue. 

As if in satirical answer, the latest radio- 
gram arrived. 

It told that the second and third Martian 
groups had merged into a single mass of 
600,000 ships, a body in itself nearly equal 
to our entire force. Meanwhile the fourth 
group was hurrying to join in. 

Wj^THAT followed is known to every 
* * schoolboy; is remembered at first hand 
by millions of veterans on two planets. 

We were no longer in a position where a 
slight advantage in offensive weapons would 
make us victors. We had shattered one group, 
yes; but the three remaining, if combined 
into one, would still outnumber us hopelessly. 
Our salvation lay in quick maneuvering, 
and our High Command knew it. 

The quickly laid plan, therefore, was to 
hurry across space and interpose the Ter- 
restrial group between the two Martian gath- 
erings. With things so ordered, we would 
have a fighting chance for success and sur- 
vival. 

The fourth Martian group had the start 
on us, but here our faster flight mechanism 
stood us in good stead. In the six-day dash 
that ensued, our formation took the shape 
of a comet with tail flaring backward. The 
head was made up of the light, speedy units, 
Putnam’s among them. Larger and heavier 
vessels followed, with the big, slow transports 
at the very tip of the tail. 

As it was, the race developed into a ques- 
tion of minutes. The first five or six Ter- 
restrial flights dashed in between the two 
hostile bodies at last, winners by the shortest 
of noses. The Martians reeled and hesitated 
before the blazing ray-guns, then retaliated 
with such deadly effect that practically all 
the Terrestrial van was wiped out. 

The heroic sacrifice of those ships, how- 
ever, served its purpose, for, almost at the 
moment of joining their fellows, the fore- 
most members of the smaller Martian group 
dropped back for a moment; and then it 
was too late. More Terrestrials sped into 
the gap, quickly deploying to keep the Mar- 
tians separated. 

We were hotly'beset on both sides. Put- 
nam’s twenty-seven ships, going into action 




STARTLING STORIES 



86 

elose behind the luckless first flights, were 
diminished by nine within five minutes. The 
others, fighting pluckily against overwhelm- 
ing numbers of Martians, would soon have 
gone the same way but for the providential 
arrival of Terrestrial dreadnoughts. These, 
with long-range disintegrators effective at 
thousands of miles, drove back our im- 
mediate antagonists. 

Other flights around us also lost heavily, 
but in the meantime the gap was kept open, 
while more and more of our fellows poured 
in to take up position in it. 

An hour passed before the fighting was on 
anything approaching equal terms, and for 
thirty minutes the conflict raged unceasing- 
ly, while the Terrestrial position grew con- 
stantly stronger and stronger. We were now 
like a curtain hanging between two swarms 
of wasps of unequal size — angry wasps, en- 
dowed with motion and intelligence, that 
with murderous valor strove again and again 
to tear apart the curtain’s fibers and join into 
one enormous and invincible swarm. 

In Commander Putnam’s ship, floating 
gracefully in a locality where the battle had 
lulled, the veteran was pouring over dia- 
grams and tables of figures in an effort to 
visualize the engagement. 

“Our formation is coin-shaped,” he ex- 
plained. “It is thousands of miles across and 
thousands of miles thick. This whole battle 
is being waged over a section of space large 
enough to hold Earth, Mars, and the moons 
of both planets.” 

“How are we holding up?” asked Fer- 
man, biting hungrily at an apple which had 
been his sole food in twenty -four hours. 

“Splendidly, it seems. I haven’t had much 
time until now to compare messages from 
other flights, but, so far as I can make out, 
we’re doing our part, and more.” 

At this juncture came orders for our unit 
to speed to the edge of the position, where 
all the fast ships were being gathered to 
prevent any effort of one Martian group to 
creep around our flank and join the other. 

It was comparatively quiet out on the 
flank of the battle, and we had time to 
observe the conflict through our television — 
a conflict that looked like a myriad points of 
light against the black sky, a Milky Way 
that seethed and churned as the divided 
Martian forces strove desperately but in vain 
to hammer their way through us and to 
merge into one army. 

At last the moment arrived when the 
Terrestrial force had achieved its desired 
position and formation. Then, like a flash, 
orders were radioed to ships great and small. 
The whole coin-shaped mass swung sharply 
away from the larger enemy host and rushed 
upon the smaller. 



The distances, great as they seemed, were 
relatively as nothing to the mighty space- 
eating mechanisms, now roaring at fullest 
pitch. A concerted operation of ray -guns 
withered away the first ranks of Martians 
like flies in the flame of blow-torches. Those 
further back, confused by the sudden assault, 
were slow at resisting. 

Meanwhile our formation suddenly slowed 
down in the center and speeded up along 
the edge, transforming its shape to that of 
a dish to hold the Martians in its center. 
Our ceaseless fire from the front was aug- 
mented by attacks on every flank of the 
enemy. 

In vain did the Martians fight back. It 
was but a matter of minutes before the 
entire group, which had left its native planet 
with 300,000 craft, was crumpled up, demor- 
alized and shot to pieces. 

Another order flashed out and we fell 
away, none too soon. The larger Martian 
organization, surprised for a short space, 
had rushed upon us as we turned our backs 
and we had to whip around to defend our- 
selves. At last we were on somewhat even 
terms. 

At the moment, according to government 
records, each side mustered about four hun- 
dred thousand ships. All others, totalling 
nearly a million, had been destroyed or 
disabled in the fight. 

And so might we have fought until the 
work of destruction was complete and the 
last craft dropped to pieces in space. Al- 
ready Putnam’s ship bore down on a Mar- 
tian adversary. Ferman was setting his ray- 
guns upon it, and Sughrue was holding his 
engines at full tone to dodge away from 
bombs. But the newest order was rushed from 
the radio. Putnam snatched it. 

“Cease hostilities at once,” he read ex- 
citedly. “An Armistice has been signed.” 

A ND so, with no decisive victory on either 
side, the two forces fell apart and hung 
silent in space. A little later came directions 
for both sides to return to bases. A truce 
had been made, said the dispatches, and Mar- 
tian envoys were hurrying to Earth to make 
terms and pledge better understanding. 

Terrestrial delegates were also sent to 
Mars. I arrived at St. Louis shortly before 
their ship left, and my uncle secured me a 
place among the young officers who went as 
attaches. Early in March we cleared for a 
journey that, even when the craft exerted 
the utmost power at its command seemed to 
me at least, to be but a crawl. 

We docked in Ekadome, the City of Mar- 
tian Rulers, to be courteously received and 
entertained. That awful battle in space had 
demonstrated the utter and dreadful sense- 




WHEN PLANETS CLASHED 87 

lessness of armed conflict. There was a grave, might have found more to say. I might have 
courteous discussion and agreement. After- offered explanations, defenses. But, since her 
ward, a dinner was announced, with the Ter- voice was soft and calm, I could do nothing 
restrials as guests. but rise in silence and walk toward the gate. 

But I slipped away as evening came down, “Chac!” Yann was running after me. 
and hailed an electro-car. The driver eyed “Chac, where are you going?” 
my Terrestrial uniform glumly, but ac- “To Earth. I must never look at you 
cepted me as a fare. We slid once more again.” 

through familiar subterranean ways, to “But, my dear!” she caught my hands. “I 
where a lift would bring me to the surface have lost so much in this war. Must I lose 
in another part of the city. With beating you as well?” 
heart I mounted and stood again before the She gripped my shoulders, 

gateway from which I had once departed “I bade you go and do your part in honor 

almost in tears. or bravery — don’t you remember? I prayed, 

My heart was like ice within me and my of course, that you and Nalo might never 

eyes swam as I slowly pushed that gate open meet. But things turned out otherwise — and 

and walked in. The huge, brilliant flowers, what else could you have done?” 
the seat beneath the strange clump, were My heart beat wildly as, at last, I dared 
as they had been, but no one was there. look into her eyes. 

Walking to the seat, I dropped into it. “The worlds now see war in all its scurvy 

“Who are you, Terrestrial?” said a startling reality,” she went on. “Well might they have 

soft voice near at hand. I rose quickly and let the battle continue so long as one drop 

looked to see the dark eyes of Yann as they of blood flowed in a fighting man, or so long 

widened. as there remained a ship or a gun or a bomb. 

“Yann! Oh, Yann!” I said, and clenched But they have stopped, have sworn to forget 
my hands in desperate futility of speech or the strife and to build on what is left. Surely, 
action, Chac, we can follow so good an example?” 

“Have you truly come, Chac?” she said in Now I knew her for a thing more lovely, 
muffled tones. “Sit down. How tired you more wise and more desirable than even my 

look! And your hair, it is streaked with dreams of her had been. I trembled as I put 

gray.” my arms around her and drew her pliant 

I was sitting again, and once more I felt her form close, 
hands on my head. “I haven’t much time here, Yann,” I mur- 

“Don’t touch me — don’t touch me!” I mured. “Tomorrow, or the next day, our ship 
cried wildly. “Yann, I would not have come, must start back, before the planets draw too 
had it not been that I could not stay away!” far apart. Will you go with me?” 

“Chac, you are ill; see how your hands “Gladly, dearest love.” 
tremble.” “You’ll love it on Earth, Yann. The fields 

“My hands! Yann, do you know that they and meadows are green there, instead of 
are red with the blood of Nalo, your blue and red and orange. The days are not 
brother?” too hot, nor the nights too cold. And there 

“I know it, Chac, I know it.” are mighty seas of water, stretching beyond 

“You know it!” I was aghast. “How your sight, 
could you know it?” “I can’t tell you a tenth of Earth’s beauties. 

“When one world rang with your praise, And there are friends there too, sweetheart, 
would not the other hear? We all knew kind, courteous people such as you will love.” 
what you did, alone against thousands. My “I know, I know. How sad that the war was 
father cursed you bitterly, swore vengeance. needed to assure one world of the humanity 
Better had he kept silent. He was killed in of the other. But let us sorrow not more, 
that final battle.” lover — come to me!” 

Had she wept or screamed or reviled, I Her kiss was a final comfort and blessing. 



NEXT ISSUE'S HALL OF FAME NOVELET 

THE DISC-MEN OF JUPITER 

A Sequel to “When Planets Clashed" 

B y MANLY WADE WELLMAN 





“You know wfeat I do with stowaway*? Jim asked sternly 



STELLAR SNOWBALL 

By JOHN BARRETT 

A precious cargo of magnetic elenium, a girl stowaway , and 
a pirate sure keep things humming on the freighter Cyrex! 

W HEN the last signal light of Tira worry about a snoopy company inspector 
had vanished astern, Jim Grant fining you for piloting a ship in your shorts, 
switched the rocket controls to Best of all you didn’t have one of those 
automatic, took off his shirt, and leisurely irritating “No Smoking” signs dangling in 
scratched his back. front of your face all the time. With a con- 

After all, there were some advantages to tented sigh he lifted a pipe from the drawer 
owning your own freighter, even if it was of the chart table. He was just reaching 
risky flying solo on an inter-stellar run. At for the tobacco humidor when the cabin re- 
least you could relax. You didn’t have to sounded to three sharp knocks. 

88 





STELLAR SNOWBALL 89 



The pipe clattered to the deck. He jerked 
himself out of the chair, grabbed a ray pistol 
from the drawer and faced the slowly open- 
ing door to the freight compartment. A 
pretty blond head came into view. 

“May I come in — or are you dressing?” 

Before his stunned mind could react, the 
door swung wide, revealing a trim, scantily 
clad feminine figure. 

Jim glanced down at his fuzzy chest and 
hairy legs. He felt the heat flow into his face, 
and, with the gun still in his hand, he made 
a swipe for the shirt. 

“Who the devil are you?” he demanded. 

And then he got the gun tangled up in 
fee shirt sleeve and she started laughing. 

“Just an ordinary stowaway,” she said, 
nonchalantly making herself comfortable in 
a chair on die opposite side of the cabin. 

Jim wrenched at the gun and tore die 
sleeve completely out of the shirt. She can't 
make a fool out of me, he told himself. 

“You know what I do with stowaways?” 
he asked sternly. 

She smiled at him. 

“You look funny in a one-sleeved shirt.” 

“Listen, lady, don’t try to fast talk me. 
When we land, I’m handing you right over 
to Earth’s custom officials. They’ll put you 
on the first return ship. Furthermore, you’ll 
pay me a one-way fare.” 

“When you say ‘lady,’ it sounds like an 
insult,” she observed dryly. “Anyway, we’re 
going to be cooped up here for two days, so 
you might as well call me Claire.” 

Jim clamped shut his jaws on the words 
that boiled up inside him. If only she were 
a man. Twice before this had almost hap- 
pened. Tiranran hoofers, tired of entertain- 
ing the rough, loud-voiced miners, had tried 
to stow away on the Cyrex. Both times he 
had discovered them before the ship left the 
planet on its interstellar run to Earth. 

Jim glared at her— the full lips, half smil- 
ing even now as she stared through the port, 
and the dark eyes. Then his anger simmered 
down. This girl was dressed like a hoofer, 
but she didn’t look like one. The cynical, 
wornout look around the eyes was missing. 

She glanced at him quickly. 

“Hadn’t you better stop staring at me and 
tend to your navigation? You’re about ten 
points off course.” 

Jim swung around to the compass. Sud- 
denly he stiffened and turned back. 

“How do you know what the course shotdd 
be?" 



For an instant site lost her self-assurance. 

“I — I — Well, that’s simple navigation. Any- 
body who’s made the trip once would know 
the course.” 

“I see.” Jim sat down in the pilot’s chair 
and regarded her. “Well, it so happens that 
when I’m carrying a magnetic cargo like 
Elenium, I don’t take the regular course.” 
He watched the girl’s face carefully. “You 
probably don’t know it, but there’s a gaseous 
cloud between the Solar System and Omega 
Orionis — sort of like a gigantic, slow-moving 
pinwheel. The astronomers think that in sev- 
eral million years it might contract into a 
star.” 

“My! How thrilling! I always wanted to 
be an astronomer.” 

Her eyes widened as she said it, but he 
had the feeling she was faking. He went on 
slowly, as if he were giving a small girl a 
lecture, keeping his eyes on her face. 

“The big passenger and freight ships go 
through the edge of the pinwheel, but ihe 
Cyrex is small and I don’t have a demag- 
netize^ so I go through the center. With 
these modern time-warp drives a small mag- 
netic disturbance is cumulative, and the 
center is like the center of a cyclonic wind- 
storm — less chance for disturbing magnetic 
effects on the cargo.” 

She nodded respectfully. “I see.” 

Jim stood up. 

“That’s the wrong answer. You should 
look blank and tell me I have nice muscles 
or something. Who are you, anyway?” 

S HE looked him straight in the eye and 
began talking like a mechanical re- 
corder. 

“I am Claire Jamison. I work in the floor 
show at Tiranian Club No. 568, and I’m sick 
and tired of looking at miners who won’t 
shave and want to dance with me in over- 
alls.” 

She tossed her blond curls pertly and 
walked to the side port. 

Jim couldn’t help but glance at the long 
shapely legs. He smiled. 

“I suppose you got that coat of tan from a 
spotlight.” 

She did not answer; merely lifted her chin 
a little higher and stared into the star- 
speckled void. 

Jim shrugged. What the devil, he thought. 
Why should I care who she is. She’s a stow- 
away, The immediate problem was how 
eotdd they live together for forty -eight hours 




90 STARTLING STORIES 



without this disconcerting intimacy. He 
looked at the figure by the port and was 
suddenly conscious of the inviting curves of 
her body. He swore to himself. The least 
she could have done was to wear a sack coat 
or something. Well, there would be no in- 
volvements. He would see to that. He picked 
the pipe off the deck and dusted it off. 
Savagely he crammed in the tobacco and 
lit up. 

She turned around, wrinkling her nose. 
“I don’t like pipes. They smell.” 

“That’s fine,” he snorted. “That’s perfect. 
I’m going to move back into the freight com- 
partment, and smoke my pipe steady for the 
next two days.” 

He gathered up his pants and shirt and 
tucked the humidor under his arm. 

“Wait,” she said. “How close does this 
course take us to Vanis?” 

“Vanis? What do you know about Vanis?” 
“Do you always glare like an ogre when 
people ask questions?” - 

"Most of the time.” He puffed on the pipe. 
“Vanis is about a forty-five minute flight 
from here on the warped time scale. Why?” 
“Then a ship taking off from Vanis now 
would intersect our course in about half an 
hour or so.” 

“That’s right, except that ships don’t take 
off from Vanis. It’s a dead star. On the maps 
it’s just an unknown.” 

But the girl went on as if she hadn’t heard 
him. 

“And if it did take off, it should be on the 
visiplate now.” 

Jim’s pipe sagged. It occurred to him that 
there might be some men in white coats 
looking for this girl. Then he saw her move 
quickly to the visiplate, and with the skill 
of an expert, focus the complicated mechan- 
ism on Vanis. 

He stepped up beside her. A cold shiver 
ran up his spine. On the flickering screen 
he saw the clear image of a green, rocket 
ship. The automatic coordinates showed 
that it had already covered a quarter the 
distance between them and Vanis and would 
intercept their course. 

He tossed his belongings on the table. 
“All right. Out with it,” he said roughly. 
“What’s behind all this?” 

The girl faced him and he saw the non- 
chalance was completely gone. Her face was 
white. 

“That’s the Mantella — Del Kaeton’s ship,” 
she said weakly. 



“I know it is. Furthermore, I know that 
Del Kaeton has a reputation among space 
miners that smells from here to Betelgeuse. 
How did you get tangled up with him?” 

“It’s all rather involved.” 

She tried to smile, but her lips were trefB- 
bling. 

“You better sit down.” He pulled oveT a 
chair. “Now, begin at the beginning, and 
cut out all this embroidery about Tiranian 
Club No! 568.” 

She glanced down at her abbreviated cos- 
tume and flushed. 

“You don’t have to act superior. You’re 
mixed up in this yourself.” 

“I’m not mixed up in anything,” Jim con- 
tradicted. “I carry cargoes for a fair price. 
I don’t monkey with contraband and I steer 
clear of guys like Del Kaeton.” 

“But you don’t usually carry Elenium.” 
“I’m carrying Elenium merely because the 
regular company freighter broke down at the 
last minute, and the cargo was urgently 
needed back on Earth.” 

“But the freighter didn’t break down,” the 
girl said. “Del Kaeton sabotaged it.” 

Jim frowned. 

"How do you know?” 

“I have proof — here.” She tapped the little 
pocket of her brief skirt. “Del Kaeton’s plot- 
ing to flood the whole Tiranian mine 
system. My father’s a mine superintendent 
He found out about it.” 

Jim blinked. 

“Isn’t that a pretty big order — flooding the 
mines?” 

“Not so big. A few men near the water 
valves at the right time and some atomic 
explosive. Del Kaeton won’t worry about the 
lives of a million miners if he stands to 
make some money.” 

“It doesn’t sound very lucrative. What 
does he do then? Get a contract to pump out 
the water?” 

“Oh no. He found a poor grade of Elenium 
ore on Vanis and he’s set up a jerry-built 
mine. It can’t compete against the Elenium 
Company, but with the Tiranian mines 
flooded, he’ll have a monopoly.” 

J IM whistled. It sounded like Del Kaeton 
all right. He tried to figure out how 
much of a crimp a Del Kaeton monopoly on 
Elenium would put in Earth’s manufactur- 
ing. The light, highly magnetic metal was 
used in practically every alloy of Earth’s 
metals. 




STELLAR SNOWBALL 91 



A fraction of an ounce in a ton of steel, 
with proper heat treatment, produced an 
alloy with a tensile strength close to two 
million pounds per square inch. 

But extracting and refining costs were 
high, even today. Elenium Mines was op- 
erating almost as a public trust. With Del 
Kaeton on the producing end, prices would 
really soar. Jim tapped his pipe against his 
teeth. 

“If this is true, it’s very bad business.” 

“If it’s true?” The girl’s dark eyes flashed. 
“They’ve got my father. That’s how true it 
is. Del Kaeton’s men took him to a hideout 
in the mountains south of the mines. He’d 
be dead by now if Del Kaeton didn’t know 
I had this.” She tapped her pocket. 

“Then why didn’t you tell me all this be- 
fore, instead of prancing around like an 
imitation strip tease artist?” 

She smiled cynically. 

“You haven’t got one of those frank, beam- 
ing countenances that invites a young lady’s 
trust and confidence, Mr. Grant.” 

Jim rubbed his chin, and was suddenly 
acutely conscious of a day’s stubble prickling 
his fingers. He pulled away his hand. 

“How did Del Kaeton know you were on 
my ship?” 

“He doesn’t. He just knows I got away. 
Yours is the only ship that’s left Tira in a 
week. I guess he put two and two together.” 
Jim walked to the visiplate. The green 
ship was approaching rapidly. Del Kaeton 
evidently had some special kind of super- 
charger. In a real chase the Cyrex wouldn’t 
have a chance. He turned to the girl. 

“I suppose the Mantella carries guns?” 
“My father says it’s practically a battle 
rocket.” 

She was rubbing her hands nervously. 
He picked up the small ray pistol and 
hefted it. 

The girl stood up, wide-eyed. 

“Haven’t you even got a cannon? I thought 
all space ships carried big guns of some sort.” 
“You read too many stories,” Jim grunted. 
“The way I figure it, people who carry a lot 
of armament are always getting themselves 
into a jam where they have to use it.” 

“But he’ll kill us.” She was leaning for- 
ward, gripping the edge of the table. “Can’t 
you see? We’re the only people that can 
expose him. He’ll wipe us out without a 
second thought.” 

Jim gazed at the image in the visiplate and 
chewed his lip. 



“Oh, for heaven’s sake, do something! 
Change your course anyway, and go through 
the cloud. This way we’re actually .going 
to meet him.” 

He stepped over to the stellar chart and 
studied it closely. Finally he turned around. 

“I don’t like to do it. This Elenium is mag- 
netic. Without a demagnetizing machine in 
the hull, it disturbs the positive charge of 
the cloud. The negative poles of the Elenium 
bars sometimes cause it to condense in 
front of the ship. At our speed even a thin 
vapor is like a brick wall.” 

The girl shook her curls impatiently. 
“But the freight crews always load Eleni- 
um bars with opposite poles together to 
neutralize the magnetic effect.” 

“That’s a nice theory,” Jim said, “but some 
bars are more strongly magnetized than 
others, so it never works out quite right.” 
He leaned across the control panel and 
pushed a lever. The cabin tilted suddenly 
as the Cyrex made a sharp turn to port. 

The girl grabbed at the stanchion in the 
center of the cabin to keep herself from fall- 
ing. 

“Are you going through it?” 

“I’m going to come in close and see what 
effect the Elenium has.” 

I T came sooner than he expected. The 
ship bucked up like a rearing charger. 
At the same time the needle on the accelera- 
tion meter dropped. The cabin became un- 
comfortably warm. 

Jim pulled back the lever. The Cyrex 
swung to starboard. He shook his head. 

“No use. We’re traveling at such a ter- 
rific speed that even the friction of a thin 
gas would burn us up.” 

“You could slow down. There wouldn’t be 
so much friction then. We might even lose 
Del Kaeton in the cloud.” 

Jim fiercely banged the ashes out of his 
pipe. 

“Not a chance. If I know Del Kaeton, he 
has a detection apparatus that could trace 
us through the Black Nebulae of Orion. How 
do you suppose he spotted us in the first 
place?” 

He sat down in the pilot’s chair and rubbed 
his fingers across his forehead. 

“Are you just going to sit there, and let it 
happen?” she demanded angrily. “Good 
heavens, you’ve been a rocket pilot for years. 
Isn’t there something? Some trick — some — ” 
He motioned her to be quiet. 




STARTLING STORIES 



92 

“Let me think, will you. Just let me 
think.” 

Absently he reached for the humidor and 
began filling his pipe. 

“You! You!” She was almost screaming at 
him. “Can’t you even think without a pipe 
in your mouth? We’ve only got about 
twenty minutes.” 

He looked up at her. Her lips were thin 
and white, and there was a pained look in 
her eyes as if she were going' to break into 
tears. He put down the pipe. For the next 
few minutes there was only the sound of 
thundering rockets. Then Jim stood up. 
She was staring at him, round-eyed, ques- 
tioning. 

“Don’t get up any hopes,” he said gruffly. 
“I’m going to try something, that’s all.” He 
stepped to the control board quickly and 
beckoned her to his side. “Keep an eye on 
our course and check Del Kaeton’s in the 
visiplate. I’m going back into the freight 
compartment. If he get’s within cannon 
range before I’m finished, let me know.” 

Ten minutes later Jim staggered back into 
the navigator’s cabin. His arms and chest 
were wet with perspiration. He nudged her 
away from the panel. 

“Okay, I’ll take over.” 

He sat down in the pilot’s chair, staring 
at the dials and taking big, deep breaths. 

“What did you do?” she asked. 

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing.” 

He pulled down the acceleration lever till 
it was jammed tight against the safety guard. 
The sudden spurt threw the girl against the 
chart table. 

“Are you crazy?” she screamed. “We’re 
heading straight for him. He’s almost in 
range.” 

Jim tied the acceleration lever against the 
guard with a wire. “This ought to get us 
opposite the center hole of that pinwheel 
ahead of Del Kaeton. That’s all I’m inter- 
ested in just now.” 

There was a loud whoosh and the cabin 
lighted up as a rocket shell cut across their 
bow. 

“He’s shooting at us,” the girl groaned. 

Jim kept his eye on the acceleration meter. 
The ship was trembling under the excessive 
surge of the motors. Again the bright flash 
flooded the cabin with light. The Cyrex 
lifted and plunged. Every needle on the 
dials wavered. Jim swallowed. That one 
must have scraped metal off the underside 
of the hull. 



He reached for the rudder lever. 

“Grab a stanchion,” he called out. “Here 
we go.” The ship made a sickening swerve. 
Chairs, books, everything loose in the cabin 
shot across the deck and piled up against 
the starboard bulkhead as the Cyrex headed 
into the center of the gaseous vortex like a 
thread into the eye of a needle. 

The girl fought her way back to the 
visiplate. 

“Where’s the Mantella?” Jim asked. 

“Directly astern.” She sobbed. “He’s gain- 
ing.” Then her head came up and she 
glanced wildly around the cabin. She 
grabbed his shoulder. “What’s happening?” 
The ship was glowing with a pale, greenish 
light. 

Jim pointed forward. The whole sky ahead 
was dancing with a million points of bright 
light. They parted and swirled away as the 
rocket approached as if some invisible plow 
far ahead were tearing open a path. 

“Can you still see Del Kaeton’s ship?” he 
asked. 

The girl looked down at the visiplate. 

“He’s disappearing,” she cried out 
“There’s a cloud forming behind us.” 

“Good.” 

Jim got up from the controls and stepped 
up to the visiplate. The outlines of the 
Mantella were fading fast in a thick white 
cloud that grew denser every second. Then, 
as he watched, the cloud seemed to contract 
and solidify. Its whiteness became more bril- 
liant. Now it was emitting streams of light. 
Jim sucked in his breath. The girl shot 
him a worried glance. 

“I didn’t expect such a violent reaction,” 
he said. He looked ahead. The brilliant 
dancing spots were still parting in front of 
the Cyrex and whirling past the ports. 

“What is it?” 

Jim licked his lips nervously. 

“I guess I speeded up the formation of a 
star — about a hundred million years. I turned 
the Elenium bars so that all the positive 
poles pointed forward. The particles of this 
gas cloud have a slightly positive charge. 
That’s what kept them apart. The forward 
part of the Cyrex is positive now so they 
fly away from it.” 

M E LOOKED out of the ports at the 
flickering pinpoints of fight and across 
his mind there flashed a vision of the gi- 
gantic disturbance he had created. The 
Cyrex was a bar magnet, and though Eleni- 




STELLAB SNOWBALL 



um was the most strongly magnetic metal 
ever discovered, its effect was multiplied 
thousands upon thousands of times by the 
time-warp drive of the ship. He slowly 
became aware that the girl was talking to 
him. 

“ — make sense. If it’s negative the par- 
ticles should cling to the after end.” 

“They can’t,” Jim said. “The rocket blasts 
blow them off. The blast must shatter their 
positive charge, somehow. They cohere be- 
hind us in a nucleus. The mass has gravita- 
tional force and attracts other particles, giv- 
ing it even more gravitational force — sort 
of a snowball effect.” 

The girl stared into the visiplate. 

“Then what happened to Del Kaeton?” 

He rubbed the back of his hand across his 
cold forehead. 

“I don’t think you’ll have to worry any 
more about Del Kaeton. He’s now part of 
the center of a new star, stewing in his own 
juice at a temperature of several thousand 
degrees centigrade.” 

Jim saw the girl shudder. He began pick- 
ing up the books scattered over the deck. 
When the cabin was neat once more he 



93 

looked at her. She was still standing by the 
control board, fussing now with a shoulder 
strap. 

She saw him looking and reddened. 

“My strap must have torn when you 
made that fast turn. It’s really a very flimsy 
costume. I guess I’ll have to borrow some of 
your clothes.” 

He grinned. 

“It looks pretty good to me,” he said. 
He tossed her his shirt “By the way, Miss — ■ 
ah — Jamison, are you really a dancer?” 

“Not professionally.” She began emptying 
the stuff out of his shirt pockets. 

He sat down in a chair. 

“The pilots’ club has some nice dances. 
Tomorrow night, in fact. If you — ” He began 
to stammer. 

“I’d love to,” she agreed quickly. 

He settled himself in the chair, avoiding 
her eyes. Unconsciously he began fumbling 
with his pipe, filling it with tobacco. Then 
he noticed what his hands were doing. He 
hesitated and looked up at her. 

“Do you mind if I smoke?” 

She smiled. 

“I’ll get you a match,” she volunteered. 



THE SO HA TACKS 

(Concluded from page 69) 



honey girl? Your little heart’s beating so 
hard. Did something frighten my poor 
baby?” 

He didn’t, she saw, remember anything. 

“It’s the storm!” she answered rather wild- 
ly. “It’s the storm. Oh, Jick, I’ve been so 
awfully scared!” 

“Why, you poor little thing! Somehow, I 
wasn’t paying much attention to it. I know, 
we’ll turn the flurors on, and then you come 
and sit on my lap on the chaise and I’ll see 
if I can’t comfort you. No wonder you’re 
scared, staying here in a storm in the dark.” 

H E PRESSED the stud in the wall. The 
soft, reassuring golden glow of the 
flurors came on. 

“That’s better, isn’t it?” Jick said. He was 
looking at her anxiously. “Now — ” 

He went over to the chaise and pulled her 
down on his knees and started kissing her. 



. It was wonderful. He was back again, her 
own sweet, loving Jick, as if none of the 
horrid events of the last few days had hap- 
pened at all. Oona closed her eyes and sighed 
deeply, from mingled relief and delight. It 
was wonderful. She clung to her husband in 
an ecstasy of bliss. 

There followed a succession of delicious 
moments. 

“Say, sweetheart,” Jick said at last. 

“Mmmm?” 

“I was thinking. You say I never do any- 
thing around the house. Well, how would 
it be if I made another of those soma bottle 
racks like I made last week? I could take 
some of that plastic-coated wire and sort of 
shape it into festoons and filagrees on the 
front. Make it decorative. How would that 
be, Oona? Another one of those soma bottle 
racks would be a mighty handy thing to have 
around the house.” 



THE MANLESS WORLDS, an astonishing novelet by Murray Leinster, featured 
in the February issue of our companion magazine, 

THRILLING WONDER STORIES! 




The Ether Vibrates 



(Continued, 

someone appreciates us even if we have vir- 
tually to starve them to win it. At any rate, 
thanks for dropping us a line. 

A CHASTENED CHAD 

by Chad Oliver 

Sarge, old top: Clawing my desperate way up from 
the depths of the dero-infested mole tunnels .... 
oops! Egad, no — not the waste-basket. . . . 

Anyhoo, chalk up one rave for Kuttner’s ABSALOM. 
The lingering urge of the Letter Hack prompts me to 
say that, at least. 

I certainly picked one swell time to extol the virtues 
of Ole Tungsten, eh wot? Ah well, he was a GOOD 
louse. Really. — 1311-25th Street, Galveston, Texas. 

P.S. — Hie Bergey is still a blotch! 

Let’s see you do any better, Chad. Let’s see 
you. Otherwise, all is forgiven. Write as you 
please — we’ll cut as we please, see? 

HOUSEHUNTING WITH 
CUNNINGHAM 

by Gwen Cunningham 

Dearest Sarge: Have you ever gone visiting, expect- 
ing to have a high old time? And then, when you got 
to well -lighted house and went through the beautiful 
rooms, you were awed to discover that there was no 
other living person in the house? 

If you have ever done this, you can readily ascertain 
that to give a party one must have a house and enter- 
tainment and, above all, a host. Right? 

Now your magazine is the house. But with the Old 
Sarge crassly murdering Snaggle-tooth and Wart-ears 
and tapering off on his Xeno, I feel that the magazine 
is just a nice house — without a host. This must not 
be — we love you as you are!— -4566 Femtop Drive, Los 
Angeles 32, California. 

Okay, love us as we are now then. And if 
you find any more empty houses these days, 
we know of a long list of people looking for 
same. 

NO MORE DOUBLETALK 

by Guerry Campbell Brown 

Dear Sarge: So the Sarge is now a fairly reasonable 
approximation of something halfway close to a mildly 
Intelligent human. What do you know? No more 
doubletalk, thank goodness. I will miss some of your 
choice remarks, no doubt, but that is not too great a 
loss. And no more super-hack letters, either. What 
will you do with them now that there is no longer a 
paper shortage? 

A little poem is brought to mind — 

The Sarge stood on the spaceship deck , 

Burning hack letters by the peck. 

You want some controversy on various STF matters? 
Well, here’s something to work on. How about making 
Captain Future a little more human and reasonable? 

How does one set about obtaining fanzines. Can 
any kind soul who wants to chip in get one? I have 
never seen a fanzine, so pardon my ignorance. — 
P O. Box 1467, Delray Beach, Florida. 

So, you want to make Curt Newton reason- 
able, Guerry. Reasonable and human at 
once, eh? Well, this brings to mind another 
little poem, sic — 

You’d have Cap Future obey the laws, 

Like lesser, ordinary mortals. 



vm. page 10) 

ftet black eyes bumping into doors 
At inconveniently opened portals. 

Have blemishes and drink iced tea 
Oh, well, perhaps such things can be. 

But when, the Sarge must pause to chortle. 

You want him reasonable and mortal 

You ask without a by your leave 
For more than even Science Fiction 
ean ever hope to achieve. 

As for getting hold of some fanzines — 
why not write some of the editors as listed 
in the Review and find out? Okay? 

HOT POTATO FROM IDAHO 

by Delbert Grant 

Dear Sarge: I’ve just been looking over the Fall 
Issue of SS. Though I can’t understand why it is 
called the Fall Issue since SS is published live times 
a year. The first thing which met my eye was that 
little item from the "STF fan” — you know, about TWS 
catering to the “specially invited hack-writer.” I 
think that this is true of SS also. And, pardon my 
saying so, something should be done about it. You 
might as well make a rule to the effect that no person 
will be allowed to have his or her letter printed in 
the Reader’s Columns of TWS and SS in any two con- 
secutive issues. 

In the Fanzine Review, I noticed the omission of 
two swell STF publications — namely, THE KAY-MAN 
TRADER by K. M. Carlson of Morehead, Minnesota, 
and FANTASY ADVERTISER, put out by Guy WH1- 
morth of Los Angeles. Both of these are top-notch 
publications and in my opinion should be right up 
on the A Group — P.O. Box 14, Lewiston, Idaho. 

Okay, Delbert, let’s take things in order. 
This five-a-year issue business has bothered 
a lot of other fans too, so here Is the answer. 
You may have heard that last year was one 
at production troubles in many lines, not 
excepting magazine publications. Shortages, 
bottlenecks and whatnot pretty well jammed 
up the works. That’s why there were only 
five issues last year. Otherwise, we remain 
bi-monthly. 

The situation you object to in the letter 
columns was caused by the very simple fact 
that certain fans write better letters than 
others — consequently they break into print 
oftener. And it is to remedy tins situation and 
to give more letter writers a chance that we 
are running more and shorter same. Okay? 

You will find FANTASY ADVERTISER 
reviewed in this issue, as it was in the last, 
but since we have not received copies of the 
KAY-MAN TRADER, we can hardly com- 
ment on it, can we? 

WHAT’S A “BEM”? 

by Charles H. W. Talbot 

Dear Sarge: Your mag is all right but not the .best. 
You do have the best letter section. Is it the fans or 
the acid comments and biting sonnets of the Sarge? 
Why do people print Kennedy’s letters? 

Pardon our ignorance but what is the meaning of 
"BEM”? Does "BEM” stand for "Beastly Extra-ter- 
restrial Monster”, or something else? 

Can’t you get some stories not Of the thud-and- 
blunder type? Can’tcha cut out the romantic angle, at 
least out of some stories? Please help give pore fa ndom 
a break and give us a better magazine. Why let TIES 

94 




get all the good stories? Keep some for STARTLING 
or get some more. — 229 Chestnut Street, Englewood, 
New Jersey. 

You sound like a bit of a BEM yourself, 
Chas. For your private files, the initials sym- 
bolize BUG-EYED MONSTER, beloved of 
cover artist Bergey. And if that indicates a 
complex, make the most of it. 

Otherwise, TWS does not get better stories. 
You only think they’re better. We try to 
give both magazines strictly impartial treat- 
ment. So there. . . .! 

GOING, GOING, GONG! 

by S. Vernon McDaniel 

Ye honored and most venerable Sergeant Saturn: 
How dare you even SUGGEST going serious on we poor 
fans? Fiddlesticks! Again and again I say — Keep on 
“kicking” the same old Neptunian gong around, bad 
puns, worse poetry and all. 

The only thing you should change about SS is the 
cover. So. to enforce my vote, I have writ a pome. 
To wit: 

A BEM is a monster 
With long funny ears, 

And bug eyes that grow longer 
Through the years. 

You’ll find one on the cover 
Of every science mag. 

Along with a handsome fellow. 

And some old unclothed hag! 

The artists have a habit 
Of continued repetition 
If they don’t stop it soon 
I’ll have to draw up a petition 1 
Ye Sarge ought to know 
Which way the waters flow; 

But NO! 

From June through to May, 

He lets them have their way, 

Drawing mugs, molls, and BEM’s at bay! 

So listen to what I say! 

Stop it today! 

AND THAT AIN’T HAY! 

— 816 Soledad Avenue, Santa Barbara, California. 

Who said we were going serious? Eradi- 
cation of some of the triter inanities that long 
held sway around here does not mean the 
Sarge is now a semi-diluted Walter Lipp- 
mami. But that hunk of verse you produced 
and flung in our (and our readers’) editorial 
kissers is enough to make anybody pretty 
grim! Thanks, anyway — it was no end 
amusing. 

THE KENNEDY KORNER 

by Joe Kennedy 

Dear Saturn: No more xeno! No Wart-ears, no 

Snaggletooth, no Frog-eyes, no grulzaks, not even the 
Blue Bern! Faith and begorra, can this be the Ether 
Vibrates of yore? 

Warning : this letter will contain no live-wire contro- 
versial stuff, no intellectual discussion, no red hot 
teapot tempests. Nope, nothing but a few slightly 
blank thoughts which chanced to strike yours truly 
in the midst of a perusal of the Fall Stashing. 

In the first place, I’m looking forward with inter- 
est and a certain amount of apprehension to future 
installments of the letter section. The elimination of 
some of the tripe that cluttered up the column (heh— 
look who’s.talking!) is, beyond doubt, all well and good 
for The Ether Vibrates’ wobbling liVer and fallen 
arches. 

I klnda hope, though, that all splashes of broad 

[Turn page ] 




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humor won’t be on the verboten list. Once in a great 
while it’s fun, and adds a sprinkle of zest to the dreary 
run of things. 

Howe’er, prepare for a stream of missives from Cap. 
Future addicts, for, gorblimey, unless our weary eyes 
deceive us, ray gun-toting Curt Newton and his intrepid 
comrades are back with us once again. Wellman’s 
"Solar Invasion” should rightfully have been subtitled 
"Get Out the Dimension Scanner, Boys — Somebody 
Swiped the Moon.” 

As for the rest of the contents, the general impres- 
sion seems to be a much happier one. There’s "After 
Armageddon”, "Afraid”, "Absalom” (gads, but you’re 
running to grade-A titles this month). The Francis 
Flagg story was an example of the Hall of Fame story 
well worth reprinting. No classic, admittedly, but none 
the less a blamed good yard. Substitute the atom bomb 
for the mysterious poison gas, and we’d have a pretty 
reasonable (and terrifying) portrait of what a war 
could be like in the very near future. 

I always get a kick out of the fanzine review section, 
in more ways than one sometimes, and this trip was no 
exception. This feature is unique in the field. The 
reviews of the oldtime Science Fiction Fan proved 
interesting. Speaking of Merritt’s "Rhythm of the 
Spheres”, why don’t you republish it in Hall of Fame ? 
(Yes, I can dream — !) 

Well, even if Terra vanishes in a puff of atomic 
smoke long about ’50, as some of the prophetic -minded 
lads would have us believe, we’ll still have our stf to 
keep us warm until that fateful day. So keep the 
Startlings coming — with or without the Xeno! 

That about does it for now. — 84 Baker Avenue, Dover, 
New Jersey. 

That cluster of A-titles in the fall START- 
LING was, believe it or not, coincidence pure 
and simple, Joe. You should be able to figure 
out the chances of it happening again. 

And we’ll keep the SS’s coming as long as 
enough of you want to purchase them, with 
all the broad humor the Sarge can muster. 

BLUE SKIES? 

by Alvin R. Brown 

Dear Sarge: I take exception to your remark that 
gradings and criticisms are more or less out. Or are 
you going to ignore the fans and go on your merry 
way passing out the well known hack at us? 

The Fall issue was a rather poor specimen all the 
way around. Ye olde Capt. Future really outdid him- 
self this time. Not only was the writing stilted and 
slightly strained, but CF is falling into a pitfall most 
series do. The plots are becoming unwieldy. How 
about letting this series rest for awhile so as to lose 
staleness 1 ? 

AFTER ARMAGEDDON wasn’t bad but I doubt if 
anyone in his right mind would nominate it for any 
Hall of Fame. 

AFRAID and ABSALOM were fairly good. At least 
they were readable, which is a rare occurrence for a 
great many of your shorts. How about giving Kuttner 
a crack at the lead novel? He can come up with a 
dilly every once in a while. 

I must congratulate you on the fanzine reviews. It is 
the finest I have read in many a moon. I hope that 
you will keep it up, as it will introduce many of your 
readers to organized fandom. 

Before I close may I pray for one small favor? 

WHY CAN’T WE HAVE A BLUE SKY ON THE 
COVER JUST FOR ONCE?????? 

Oh yeah, TEV sounded pretty good for a change, 
adult that is!! — 139-29 34th Road, Flushing, New York. 

Well, you get your Kuttner in the very next 
issue, novel and all, Alvin. And there won’t 
be any more Cap Futures for a while at any 
rate. And the Sarge is not dead against 
ratings ... he merely has a very live hatred 
for those odious items called comparisons. 
In short, your peeves are answered — save for 



the blue skies on the covers. Better see the 
motion picture of the same name and forget 
about wishing for the moo — I mean, for blue 
skies on SS covers. 

Don’t ask us why, ask the art editor! 

IRONY IN OUR SOUL 

by Patti J. Bowling 

Dear Sarge: Just finished the Fall Issue of SS and 
am writing this in answer to your Invitation at the end 
of TEV. Frankly, I believe this is the worst issue of 
SS I’ve read, and there wasn’t a decent illustration in 
the magazine. The only really good thing was TEV. 
Incidentally, I noticed where Texas writers pre- 
dominated. What could this be a sign of, I wonder? 

The three short stories weren’t too bad, but they 
certainly weren’t good. They had their points and 
AFRAID had excellent characterizations. As for the 
Captain Future novel, phooey! . . his ironical eyes 
were green and ironical.” I quote this as an illus- 
tration of one of the many, many inanities to be 
found in the story. The actual plot of the story is 
much too hazy and the information contained in THE 
WORLDS OF TOMORROW .should have been put into 
the story. The only things in the whole story I liked 
were Oog and his antics. 

I’ll be waiting for the next issue and please, Sarge, 
have some decent, adult stories in it . — 13 7 Eads Ave- 
nue, San Antonio. Texas. 



Well, they pull no punch in Texas 
No matter what their sex is ... . 

No other comment, Patti, save for a plain- 
tive “ouch!” 

E REX US 

by Rex E. Ward 

Gentlemen: On to the Fall issue: 

I am now efficaciously certain of one thing; namely, 
that Earle Bergey is showing definite improvement. 
After painting an excellent cover for the Fall Thriv- 
ing Wonder Stories, he comes along with an equally 
beautiful cover for Startling. 

"The Solar Invasion,” by Manly Wade Wellman. By 
virtue of being a Cap Future novel, it takes first place 
with an 8.5. Manly is no Hamilton by any means, but 
he can write — and good! Incidentally, I’m very glad 
to see my old friend U1 Quom, back again. 

"After Armageddon,” by Francis Flagg. 8.2. Ex- 
cellent — so excellent in fact, that it almost beat CF 
out of first place. I remember when it was originally 
published. 

"Absalom,” by Henry Kuttner. 6.0. Not up to Hank’s 
usual standard, very well written, though — and worthy 
of the score it took. 

"Afraid,” by V. E. Thiessen. To me it didn’t click. 
3.5. 

The illustrations were all fair, but could be better. 

A few suggestions: 

Get Paul on the cover. Get Finlay on the cover. 
Trim the edges. Put some novels in the Hall of Fame, 
in serial form. More stories by Edmond Hamilton (glad 
to see him coming up), Stanton A. Coblentz, Manly 
Wade Wellman, Henry Kuttner, Murray Leinster, 
Pol ton Cross, and if possible, Eando Binder. — El 
Segundo, California. 

Well, the Sarge needed that after Patti 
bowled her ten-strike. We’ll see what we can 
do to fulfill your wishes (probably nothing, 
Rex), though why anyone wants to revive 
such an archaic cover designer as Paul es- 
capes us. Wellman, Kuttner and Leinster are 
contributing regularly, of course. 

CONTUSIONS ON CLASSICISTS! 

by Benson Perry 

Dear Sarge: Startling Stories received as usual. The 




cover Is the worst since the Summer Issue of 1944 and 
even this must be considered a draw. While we are 
throwing around superlatives, I’ll say that it is the 
worst I’ve ever seen drawn Earle Bergey. 

And there'is little to argue about in the fiction in 
Startling. Most of us will agree that the "Solar In- 
vasion” thing was not only a very poor story, it was 
even bad for Captain Future. And to think that MWW 
wrote this. . . . ! 

Flagg and Kurtner alone were readable. 

And so, we come to the fanzine review. Tell me 
Sarge, how many people have given you the horse- 
laugh on the Black Flames review? Did anybody re- 
mind you that the magazine was named after the lead 
character in the “Black Flame” which was the first 
novel ever printed by Startling? Probably the greatest 
too. At least it usually rates high in the fan polls. 

Thanks for the A review of CYGNI. I'll readily grant 
that the cover was very poor. In fact I drew it my- 
self (which guarantees the matter). The peculiar 
thing about the matter is that (in general) the articles 
you liked, I considered filler material and what you 
called "fifth-rate” generally was the best liked. It’s 
a bit confusing. Wonder what you’ll think of the latest 

AMUSING STORIES comes next. Here you pulled 
two serious boners. The first is that AS costs nothing 
but a kind request since it was designed as a supple- 
ment to CYGNI. Anybody who wants a copy, can 
obtain them as long as they last by writing me. 

Secondly, AS did not print a plug for the ‘ 'unmen - 
tional Maxin" magazine. I’ve done some pretty low 
things in my life, Sarge, but I never gave a plug for 
either that vile Maxin or its professional big brother. 
Gad. 

The first post-Xeno issue shows a very good letter 
column is on the way. Somehow I recognized a definite 
editorial antagonism. Some of the curt remarks that 
you made to various suggestions and comments must 
have hurt. Or maybe I’m sensing something that isn’t 
there. Take the reply to Oliver. The guy wrote what 
would have been an excellent letter (relatively) an 
issue ago and when he wrote it, it was in style. Why 
bite down on him so icily? 

How about some of the fans starting a little dis- 
cussion on the late H. G.. Wells? What was his best 
stf yam? His most prophetic? 

I’ve read several but unfortunately the titles don’t 
remain with me too well. As far’s I am concerned 
the fiTst and greatest time-travel story ever written 
is his “The Time Machine.” “Men Like Gods” 
seemed quite wordy but I still consider it well worth 
reading. A very prophetic story — the title escapes me 
— written about the time of the Wright Brothers’ orig- 
inal flight, describes a great world war complete with 
aerial machines and atomic power. 

H. G. Wells probably deserves to be considered the 
first important writer of stf. Some may argue that 
others have preceded him; like those back in the days 
of Icarus and Dedaleus (optional spelling!) and so on 
up to the 19th century, but actually most of these were 
pure fantasy with no relation to science fiction. Jules 
Verne is a contender and he may have popularized the 
idea of moon ‘rockets’, etc. But for the most part, 
Verne was a very dull, dreary writer. — 68 Madbury, 
Durham, New Hampshire. 



So now the Sarge is crushed, along with 
Oliver’s “ole Tungsten.” But unlike certain 
hyper-sensitive fans, he can take it (he 
should — he gets paid for it). So what about 
BLACK FLAMES? We liked it, didn’t we? 
And we refuse to he condemned to reading 
our own back issues. You fans can do that 
and welcome. 

The Wells comment is interesting and, we 
hope, will promote a bit of fuss in these 
columns. The opus whose title you forgot 
was, the Sarge believes, A WORLD SET 
FREE. But you can have THE TIME MA- 
CHINE. Personally, we preferred THE 
SLEEPER WAKES, WAR OF THE 

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WORLDS and FOOD OF THE GODS, along 
with A WORLD SET FREE. But there is 
plenty of good fodder for any imaginative 
reader in the early Wells pseudo-science 
opera. 

DRAW THE SHADES! 

by Don Hutchinson 

Dear Sarge : Shades of Buck Rogers ! Let me see now. 
Was it Joan Randall who was captured last, or was it 
Ezra Gurney? Will Grag manage to crawl out of the 
pit of acid, and did Otho actually walk into the in- 
visible ray beam? Yes sir, another good old Cap Future 
opus has rolled along on its regular orbit. 

There is a rumor going around that Murray Leinster 
has written two sequels for The Disciplinary Circuit 
that will appear in TWS soon. Is that right? 

Your two magazines are, in my opinion, really tops 
in science-fiction owing to the excellent special features 
and departments, such as, “The Ether Vibrates,” “Meet 
the Author,” “The Story Behind the Story” and the 
review of fanzines. I think your mags could be im- 
proved even more by adding another department in 
each, such as a science-fiction quiz, or maybe even by 
reviving the Science -Fiction League. — 7 Tacoma Ave- 
nue, Toronto, 5, Ontario, Canada. 



Yes, Leinster has done the sequels men- 
tioned and one of them, THE MANLESS 
WORLDS, is appearing in the current issue 
of TWS. We are working on another depart- 
ment now — or rather another regular feature 
— but wish to be sure its quality will be out- 
standing. Oke? 

PLUCKED BY THE DOWNEY ONE 

by John Van Couvering 

Dear Sarge: Re: the Fall ish of Startling Stores , 1946. 

Viz.: although you made many lurid promises about 
Manly Wade Wellman’s ability to do CF up brown, I 
still find that his treatment of the rather dubious ex- 
cellency of Curt Newton leaves much to be desired. 

As for the shorts — just shorts. “After Armageddon” 
was a flop. Atomic war; great holocaust, almost every- 
one killed; unknown secretary, bookkeeper, butler, or 
what-have-you takes over; raises remnants to new 
heights. Phooey. “Absalom — ” the same, only more so. 
Kuttner can do better than that. 

“Afraid” is the only one worth the paper it’s printed 
on. Although it’s an old, old, plot, it’s hard to recognize 
it ’neath the masterful treatment Theissen (whoever 
he is) gives it. Dunno why, but I like it. 

As for The Ether Vibrates— I would like to nominate 
Chad Oliver’s gem for first place (I’m still laughing), 
... in fact, I think I will, although it may go against 
your new and progressive policy. You may make TWS 
and SS into respectable (STFictionally, that is) mags 
... if you keep it up. Second place will go to Ron 
Anger, mainly because he states my views on the 
Spring ish to a T. Third place I bestow on Kruger, 
Jewett, and Berry. . Let them fight it out. — 902 North 
Downey Avenue, Downey, California. 



Another tear for Ole Tungsten, eh? You 
have a right to your own views on the stories. 
But why do you capitalize the V in Van in 
your name? It ain’t right. 

GOODNESS FROM GABRIEL 

by Howard Gabriel 

Dear Sarge: I was very much surprised to see the 
cover on the cover of the Fall ish. It was good. The 
short stories took top hilling over the novel this ish. 
ABSALOM was the best. AFRAID came next, closely 
followed by the novel. AFTER ARMAGEDDON, tho’ 
last, was a very good story. The Captain Future was 



HSccellent in parte and hacky in others. 

As I read all the letters X purposely looked to see 
tf anyone panned DEAD PLANET because X lilted it 
sc much and wanted to argue with someone who didn’t. 

The REVIEW OF FAN PUBLICATIONS is a very in- 
teresting department. So was the WORLDS OF TO- 
MORROW. — 1450 East 19 Street, Brooklyn 30, New 
York. 

Short and, on the whole, very sweet, 
Howard, 

USING THE OLD DEAN 

by Walter B. Dean 

Dear Editor: You wouldn’t know it, but I am a pro- 
lific letter-hack of "ethergrams” to TWS and STAR- 
TLING— letters that never get posted. The reason is 
that I feel the urge to write only when I become en- 
thusiastic over some story or other. 

Today I’m going to try to write a whole letter about 
stories and stuff h don't like. You’ve been sporting 
enough to present me with a supreme subject for such 
an epistolary tirade — namely, the Fall STARTLING. 

First of all, I’ll attack that almost taboo subject — the 
artwork and Mr. Bergey. Matter of fact, while I favor 
the casting out of most of our illustrators, I believe 
the much-maligned Earle should be retained. He is 
a highly competent colorist, and his style has a certain 
dignity that is virtually unmatched in the stf-cover field 
today. 

But STARTLING’s covers are not scientiftctional. 
"The current type of covers sells magazines! 1 * you 
retort. Faugh ! 

Now, to the stories. 

First, of course, "The Solar Invasion.” The return 
of Captain Future and the space -opera, and consequent- 
ly a jarring blow to STARTLING’s recent trend toward 
scientifantasy, as brilliantly exemplified by "Valley of 
the Flame” and "The Dark World.” This issue. Curt 
Newton. Next issue, a Hamilton epic "The Star of 
Life.” Will STARTLING recover? 

On the other hand, the shorts: "Afraid” is in first 
place, another example of superior craftsmanship, em- 
bodying nostalgic prose and a truly fantastic setting, 
which are usually employed only on "mood stories.” 
The ubiquitous Mr. Kuttner is present, as usual, and 
"Absalom” is one of his best short efforts. 

"After Armageddon,” the HoF reprint, was typical 
of its kind, and saved from mediocrity by the quality 
of the writing. Excellent! 

I was afraid I’d start praising. Too much of this will 
defeat the purpose of this letter. — 2215 Benjamin Street 
JY. E., Minneapolis 13, Minnesota. 



Okay, consider yourself defeated, Walter. 
And SS should really have recovered with 
Kuttner’s LANDS OF THE EARTHQUAKE 
next issue. Bear with us, please. 

BLISS FOR BERGEY 

by Bill Weeks 

Dear Editor: Well, well. Bergey has anally painted 
a fairly good cover. Capt. Future is well drawn, and 
Joan would be O.K. but for the fact that her fingernails 
are polished and her hair is in perfect shape. Now an- 
swer me truthfully, Sarge, do you think it likely for a 
girl to go tearing thru jungles and the other idiotic 
things which Joan does without even losing her nail- 
polish or mussing her hair? Aside from that and the 
yellow background, the cover was O.K. 

The two stories which I thought best were, AB- 
SALOM and AFRAID. The Capt. Future yam was its 
U3ual nauseating self, but I would still rate it above 
your so-called “classic." By the way, who chooses the 
stories to be reprinted in file “Hall of Fame”? 

The inside pics were no good, but since you won’t 
ever drop your punk illustrators, there’s no use griping 
about it. 

This month’s Feature Flash was one of the best ever 
published in your zine. 

The Viz was O.K. with OLIVER, KREUGER, and 

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JEWETT as the highlights this time. — 1800 MaxwetC 
Avenue, Parkersburg, West Virginia. 

We shall have to get up a feature on cos- 
metics of the future to explain Joan’s super 
grooming. Meanwhile, pax vobiscum. 

OH, DEAR 

by Walter A. Coslet 

Dear Sarge: Some comments on the Fall Startling : 
It would seem that you are becoming less particular 
about Captain Future. Another thing noticeable is the 
extreme scarcity of the usual “Future” slang and the 
addition of slang more normal to our day (although 
this may be due to the editorial trend which has done 
away with mutant frog, toad and horned -toad com- 
panions of the Sarge). In spite of the fact that there 
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“space-opera.” 

AFTER ARMAGEDDON certainly exhibits the calm 
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type of material “normal” today! It would seem, 
though, that Flagg slipped up in not using atomic 
bombs. 

Thiessen’s AFRAID is a nice little psychological vig- 
nette, though it should have been a clear give-away 
to Kane when he looked at his foot and saw it all 
pulped and bloody, and yet the air did not escape from 
his space suit. As for the illustration, many a fan 
artist could do better. 

No comment on WORLDS OF TOMORROW, except 
I wish you’d use Schomburg more often. 

In ABSALOM we have another case where Kuttner 
sacrifices quality for quantity and yet manages to pro- 
duce a better than average story. And talk about 
action-packed pictures ! 

You’re doing right well in your editorial departments 
— at present you’re definitely the best in the field 
thanks to your reformation. Congrats on your fnz 
column— it’s really on the ball with its reviews, and 
the report on the efforts of yesteryear was very wel- 
come — here’s hoping for more of the same. — Box 6, 
Helena, Montana. 



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Thanks, Walter. As for Schomburg, we 
agree his artistic ability is high. 

SING A SONG OF SINGER 

by Ben Singer 

Dear Editor: I have to say now what has been said 
a countless number of times before — that “I’m a new 
fan and this is the first time I’ve written a prozine.” 
But now to get on with business — that of rating the 
stories of your fall issue of STARTLING. Your best 
story in my opinion was “Afraid.” “The Solar Invasion” 
was good — though pure space-opera. To tell the truth 
I like “space-opera.” I dislike fantasy generally though 
not always. “The Dark World” seemed to me like a 
complicated fairy tale with its witchcraft and such. 
The other stories in the Fall issue were not good enough 
to mention. 

Speaking of “mention” I don’t think I ought to men- 
tion the fact that I am publishing a new fanzine called 
“The Mutant.” It’s to have from Ten to Twelve pages 
and features articles by Joe Kennedy, Rick Sneary, 
W. A. Coslet (Just wac for short), Gerry Williams and 
others. No — I don’t think I ought to mention the fact. 

Say-y-y are there any of you fans that would care 
to correspond with me? I’m willing and waiting. — 
c/o Holzman, 4005 Webb, Detroit 4, Michigan. 

We take care of you and your MUTANT in 
very fancy style in the fanzine review column, 
Ben. 

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Don’t let anyone tell you we pull our 
punches, editorial or alcoholic. 

WICHITANIA 

by Edwin Sigler 

Dear Sir: Congratulations on deciding to go on the 
water wagon. The magazine smells better as a result. 
The stories were pretty fair but why don’t the artists 
read the stories they illustrate. 

Captain Future’s girl friend is supposed to be a pretty 
decent girl and in the story was dressed in jacket and 
slacks. Yet the artist insists on picturing her as if she 
were a cheap dance hall girl. 

The moon story was unusual as it was the first time 
a hero ever admitted being scared. You know and I 
know that there are more people that are scared than 
they will admit. 

The classic wasn’t so bad but I dispute the contention 
that a war could bring barbarism upon the world. The 
ancient barbarians destroyed the Roman Empire but 
civilization still flourished in the east and there was 
an eventual rebirth of it in the west. However the mass 
of people of that day were uneducated and lacked 
knowledge. Nowadays men have spread knowledge so 
far that it couldn’t possibly be blotted out .— <1328 N. 
Market, Wichita 5, Kansas. 

You’re almost as much of an optimist about 
so-called civilization as you are about dance 
hall girls. Who and whatever gave you the 
idea dance hall girls are cheap? The Sarge, 
from his few salad-days outings in their 
purlieus, knows better. In almost any dance 
hall a visitor can go through more money, 
faster and to less avail than in anything but 
a slot-machine den. There isn’t even a jack- 
pot, Eddy! 



SAYS THE SERGEANT— TO THE 
SARGE 

by Ex-Sergeant Ann Gjelhaug, WAC 

Dear Sgt. Saturn: From “Outlaws of the Moon” in 
the Spring 1942, issue of Captain Future (Page 29, 
second column) : . . The hurtling telautomaton 

reached its goal. The iridium vase it clutched struck 
President Carthew with shattering impact. Carthew 
collapsed without a groan. . . . Appalled, Curt Newton 
looked down at the pallid features. It was the oldest 
friend of the Futuremen who lay dead here.” 

From the Fall 1946 Startling Stories, Page 19 of the 
novel “The Solar Invasion,” featuring Captain Future: 
“James Carthew was gray-haired, distinguished -look- 
ing. ... In two of the interplanetary wars he’d been 
a daring officer of fighting men. Now, at the height 
of his career and powers, he was the beloved president 
of all habitable worlds within the space-latitudes 
dominated by Old Sol. He looked up from his desk 
as the group entered. . . 

Perhaps I’ve misjudged and underestimated Captain 
Future. He is the greatest scientist of the Universe — 
that I know. But I didn’t realize till now that even he 
could bring dead men back to life! 

Of course, I’ve missed most of the Newton novels 
since “Outlaws of the Moon,” having spent the last 
three years in the WAC overseas, so perhaps “James 
Carthew” reappeared earlier in the series. Still, in any 
case, I think it was a wonderful miracle that Captain 
Future was able to reanimate him. 

Outside of the appearance of “President Carthew,” 
the story was very good. Others may disagree, but I 
think it was as fine as many of Edmond Hamilton’s 
tales about the Futuremen. Surely, it matched “The 
Lost World of Time” and “Quest Beyond the Stars” for 
excellence. I never read any of Brett Sterling’s Cap- 
tain Future stories. 

“Absalom” by Kuttner, and “Afraid” by V. E. 
Thiessen were both oke, but very insignificant com- 
pared with the Future novel. Francis Flagg’s Hall of 

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Fame reprint was scrumptious * 

TEV was rather dull this time. Let’s have Ye Sarge’s 
space lingo back! Chad Oliver and Tom Jewett wrote 
the best “Ethergrams.” I tried to follow the latter’s “ad- 
vice to letter-hacks’’ in writing this letter . — 4031 Byers 
Avenue, St. Louis Park, Minnesota. 

So we’re dull, eh? Sink us! As for the 
Carthewerratum, let’s just say you under- 
estimated Captain Future, or at any rate his 
current creator, Manly Wade Wellman, and 
leave it at that. Methinks you caught us 
where the hair is short. 

BB SHOT 

by B. B. Norton 

Greetings, Sarge: 

And howdeedo. 

Norton wishes 

Speech with you! 

Leave us come to the point. The Cap Future novel 
in the Fall issue was awful! 

Sarge, how could you? When I turn to the novel the 
first thing I notice is another author. That makes three 
who write about Cap Future. Next, I catch the corny 
style of writing that takes one back to the old “Daunt- 
less Daskovitch” series books. 

Though I tried — strictly out of loyalty to SS and 
fandom in general — I simply can not stomach it. I get 
to page 56 and then I bum the mag. 

The novel ruins the best issue in a long time of SS. 
No kidding, Sarge, how is fandom to attract more fen 
to the fold as it were if such stuff is allowed to parade 
under the title of science-fiction ? — 161 6th Avenue 
West, Seaside, Oregon. 

Well, thanks for trying. But there have 
been more than three, or where have you 
been? 



ALTERED ECO 

by Garvin Berry 



Dear Sarge: Fall SS had surprisingly numerous at- 
tractions in addition to the delightful absence of your 
dipsomaniacal alter ego. ABSALOM of course was 
first. Kuttner in various pseudonymic incarnations has 
had more to say and has said it more entertainingly 
than any other current stf writer. This yam chiefly 
noteworthy for interesting Biblical parallel and VERY 
neat ending. 

AFRAID rather nice although had several implausi- 
bilities. Doubt very much the presence of uranium on 
surface of the lightweight moon. Strained ending, 
what? 

AFTER ARMAGEDDON is, I tritely proclaim the 
obvious, more apropos and powerful now than it was 
in Sept. ’32. I welcome the coming policy (I HOPE 
it’s a policy) of longer reprints, since the novels have 
become waste paper. Or worse. 

Casual scanning only for SOLAR INVASION. Hero 
that I am, I invite destruction by denouncing Capt. Tom 
Swift Future. This constant harping upon already over- 
played theme is rapidly becoming a menace to all who 
! dislike banal repetition. 

Pix bad as usual when Whoozis (Lawrence -Stevens) 

! and Finlay not around. BERGEY STILL BLOTCHES 
* (I'm a Bergey-Buster, remember) but hesitatingly ad- 
mit that the feminine physiognomy on cover is most 
unusual face Earle ever did. Attractive, no less, 
j In TEV, this dilute version of Sarge is better than 
! whiplash creature in current TWS. Why extremes, 

! Sarge? Oliver and Joke not deserving of editorial 
’ scorn; always interesting and amusing — they were tedi- 
j ously copied by less original morons. Two-edged. In- 
} cidentally because of 4 month lag in publication of 
: maize -missives, Chaddo has been worryin’ all over 
; South Texas. Ashamed, Sarge? 

Curt inquiry: why did mag pages suddenly turn 
I green beginning with one upon which my letter ap- 
I peared? Significance? Interested and puzzled to see 
more’n half letters from Texas. Chaddo’s only one 
I’ve uncovered in last decade. Cause, he’s enuf to stop 
further search — for various ambiguous reasons. 
Your paragraph re artistic inadequacy to present fan- 
102 





tasy was tar too true. Do not tninjt n applies to 
majority of stf yams though — 5416 Ave. R, Galveston, 
Texas. 



We wondered about the green pygidium on 
the fall issue ourselves. However, it is not 
radioactive or otherwise poisonous. Prob- 
ably it was caused by use of green wood 
pulp. Slash that pine! 

BLEAT FROM ST. PETE 

by Lin Carter 

Dear Sarge: “The Solar Invasion” by Wellman wasn’t 
so hot as a Capt. Future yam. Since when is Otho able 
to shrink and expand his body? However, “After 
Armageddon” and “Afraid” more than made up for 
the lousy parts in the novel. 

“After Armageddon” truly deserved its title of 
“classic.” It sounded much like those “horrors of 
Atomic War” we hear so much about these days. 

"Afraid” was very much like old time stf — which we 
have altogether too less of. “Absalom” wasn’t so good 
tho . . . tut, Sarge. In fact, several tuts — a Kuttner 
yarn, too. ... 

And that cover, too — WOW! Maria Montez, crawling 
out of a pool of lemonade, and being threatened by 
a circular pincushion! Ugh. By the way, where did 
you get the (um) model for the lush heroin . . . 
heroine . . . heir . . . skoit? 

Well, well, an Ed Hamilton yarn next ish. . . . Au 
rervoir (as they say in French) till then. Sarge. — 565 
20th Ave. S., St. Petersburg 6, Florida. 

That wasn’t lemonade — it was melted 
butter. 

CHEERS FOR “INVASION” 

by Wallace Weber 

Dear Sarge: I have just gotten my typewriter which 
sabotages my last excuse as to why my letters aren’t 
published. (I refuse to recognize the fact that they just 
aren't good enough.) Oh well, here I go again. 

After looking over the Fall issue of you-know-what, 
I have come to the conclusion that it will do no good 
to ask for a space -ship on the cover. Worse yet, I am 
almost beginning to like the pictures on the covers. 
Speaking of pictures, how about having a Hall of 
Fame picture classic each issue along with the story? 
(I didn't think so either.) 

In my worthless opinion, “The Solar Invasion” is one 
of the best Captain Future yarns I have read. . . . But 
then, I haven’t read many of them. I sort of missed 
the Futuremen department that used to come with the 
stories. Speaking of Captain Future, (Here I go again) 
why not start his own magazine again, only have a 
different author each issue? 

I had better shut up before I get any more ideas. — 
Box 85 S, Ritzville, Washington. 

It’s all right, Wallace. As to your H of F 
pictures, you tell us where to find ’em and 
we’ll run ’em. In spite of the banzais of many 
fans, archaic STF artwork was of a pretty 
primitive sort — perhaps unpretty primitive 
would be more descriptive. Glad you liked 
the Cap anyway — glad somebody did. 

PHOBIC TOWARD BERGEYPHOBES 

by Lloyd N. Cheney 

Dear Sarge: I have just finished the latest fall issue 
of STARTLING STORIES and I think it is really on the 
ball. 

I don’t claim to be a science critic, (as some of your 
other readers) but I do think that your Captain Future 
novel is tops and Thiessen’s "Afraid,” although a short, 
runs a close second, because it was different from the 

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average story. 

Now I am going to start a few atoms smashing 
verbally, but not at your Mag. Surprised? Every time 
I read Ethergrams I bum up. All you ever hear is un- 
pleasant remarks about Bergey's cover pictures. Would 
some of these so-called art critics do me a favor and 
please do a few drawings for the public’s view and 
inspection? I doubt very much if they can. If not, will 
they please remain silent till they can do better. I can 
not see someone whose jealousy of artists leads them 
astray. 

Well, Sarge, I guess I had better close as I will prob- 
ably be burning when I read the so-called critics’ reply 
as it is . — 730 St. Johns Ave., Lima, Ohio. 

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TEN-YEAR FAN 

by Dennis Lethbridge 

Dear Sarge: This is the first time in the ten years of 
reading science fiction that I have taken time to write 
to an editor. The occasion ... no more of that drivel 
you were torturing us with. As a result I can read 
your column without breaking out in a cold sweat. 
Let’s keep it that way. 

This Kennedy guy seems to have been around a long 
time. I wonder if he’s the same Kennedy as the one 
who used to be a regular contributor to mags back 
around 1938 or 1940. 

Ah yes, those were the days when the greatest of 
all writers was turning out his masterpieces. Of course 
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104 




many other writers have the knowledge of science that 
Smith had. A suggestion . . . how about one of his 
stories for your Hall of Fame. I was thinking of the 
“Gray Lensman” in particular but that would be too 
long. However anything of his is good enough to rate 
H of F classification. 

Getting back to SS. Why do you have to spoil an up- 
and-coming mag by including those corny Captain 
Future stories. It’s not that the plot isn’t good, it’s 
the characterization. Wellman has sunk to a new low 
in his latest. Some people aren’t going to like that but 
it’s my honest opinion that a five-year-old child could 
do better. 

That’s all for this time. If you keep CF out of SS 
you have a regular buyer. TWS is okay for my money, 
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VOICE FROM THE DEEP 
by Arthur T. Mareth, MOMM 2/C 

Hi Sarge: I’ve been a steady reader of S.F. for the 
last ten or fifteen years and I don’t think I have ever 
had a beef or a gripe. Now I have though. 

The gripe is for the guys who are always telling the 
world how bad the stories are. Seems that those guys 
are free to read and comment all they want, but it also 
seems that they could find something good to say once 
in a while to offset the monotony a little. 

For the last four years or so I have been in the 
U. S. Navy, and attached to the Submarine Force. 
Sometimes I have found it very difficult to find ANY 
S.F. to read. And believe me Sarge I appreciate all 
those “bad covers,” “poor stories,” and “lousy illustra- 
tions,” much less beef about the “un trimmed edges.” 

The fall issue of S.S. was superb as far as this reader 
is concerned. I always went for the “Captain Future” 
and still do for that matter. I will try and put the 
stories down as I saw them. The old business of a jug 
of Xeno for this, a short beer for that I don’t know 
much about so I’ll give them the old stand-by of Stars. 

1. “The Solar Invasion” 4 Stars. 

As all “Captain Future” novels, good from the start 

to the finish. This is the first “C.F.” novel I have seen 
since before the war. ’Tain’t my fault, Sarge, couldn’t 
get a hold of many mags. I have always liked Wellman, 
but tell rae Sarge, didn’t Hamilton write “C.F.” or am 
I thinking of something else? 

2. “Afraid” 3 Stars. 

This was a good one too. I especially liked the slight- 
ly different plot, I wish it could have been a few pages 
longer, as it was I was just getting interested in it and 
it came to an abrupt stop. 

3. “Absalom” 2 Stars. 

I was slightly disappointed with this story. I did like 
it but I have also read a lot of better material from the 
pen of Kuttner. 

4. “After Armageddon” 1 Star. 

This one was a little slow, and an old plot at that, 

if I sound like I’m griping, I don’t mean to. But the 
story reminded me of one I read a few years back. 

As for the other articles. 



“Ether Vibrates”. Good 

“Worlds of Tomorrow” .Good 

“Meet the Author” Good 

* “Review of Fan Pub” ....Good 



The cover by Bergey was worth framing. Some of 
the wolfs who always want gals on the cover should 
be well satisfied. 

All in all I think the ole mag is well up to par, and 
I hope it stays that way. — 17. S. S. Redfin. SS 272, Sub 
Base, New London, Conn. 

Okay, Arthur, and it is very comforting to 
the Sarge to know that SS can be and is 
read under water. 

Well, that’s it, this trip. See you all again 
next time out! 

—SERGEANT SATURN. 



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STATEMENT OF THE OWNERSHIP, MANAGE- 
MENT, CIRCULATION, ETC., REQUIRED BY THE 
ACTS OF CONGRESS OF AUGUST 24, 1912, AND 
MARCH 3, 1933, of Startling Stories, published quar- 
terly at Chicago, 111., for October 1, 1946. State 

of New York, County of New York, ss. Before me, a 
Notary Public in and for the State and county afore- 
said, personally appeared H. L. Herbert, who, having 
been duly sworn according to law, deposes and says 
that he is the Business Manager of Startling Stories, 
and that the following is, to the best of his knowledge 
and belief, a true statement of the ownership, manage- 
ment, etc., of the aforesaid publication for the date 
shown in the above caption, required by the Act of 
August 24, 1912, as amended by the Act of March 3, 1933, 
embodied in section 537, Postal Laws and Regulations, 
printed on the reverse of this form, to wit: 1. That the 
names and addresses of the publisher, editor, managing 
editor, and business manager are: Publisher, Better 

Publications, Inc., 10 East 40th Street, New York, N. Y.; 
Editor, None; Managing Editor, None; Business Man- 
ager, H. L. Herbert, 10 East 40th Street, New York, 
N. Y. 2. That the owner is: Better Publications, Inc., 10 
East 40th Street, New York, N. Y. ; N. L. Pines, 10 
East 40th Street, New York, N. Y. 3. That the known 
bondholders, mortgagees, and other security hold- 
ers owning or holding 1 per cent or more of total amount 
of bonds, mortgages, or other securities are: None. 4. That 
the two paragraphs next above, giving tire names of the 
owners, stockholders, and security holders, if any, con- 
tain not only the list of stockholders and security holders 
as they appear upon the books of the company but also, 
in cases where the stockholder or security holder appears 
upon the books of the company as trustee or in any 
other fiduciary relation, the name of the person or cor- 
poration for whom such trustee is acting, is given; also 
that the said two paragraphs contain statements em- 
bracing affiant's full knowledge and belief as to the cir- 
cumstances and conditions under which stockholders and 
security holders who do not appear upon the books of 
the company as trustees, hold stock and securities in a 
capacity other than that of a bona fide owner ; and this 
affiant has no reason to believe that any other person, 
association, or corporation has any interest direct or 
indirect in the said stock, bonds, or other securities than 
as so stated by him. H. L. HERBERT, Business Man- 
ager. Sworn to and subscribed before me this 1st day of 
October, 1946. Eugene Wechsler, Notary Public. My 
commission expires March 30, 1948. 



REVIEW OF THE 
SCIENCE FICTION 
FAN PUBLICATIONS 

By 

SERGEANT SATURN 

A LOT of special stuff seems to have 
come rolling in since the last time 
the Sarge took a look at his review 
material. So, before we roll up our sleeves, 
sharpen our surgical knives and get down to 
the real business at hand — namely dissection 
of STF fanzines — let’s clear them from the 
agenda. 

The Hadley Publishing Company’s success- 
ful publication of THE TIME STREAM and 




SKYLARK OF SPACE seems to have set off 
some sort of a chain reaction in its field. Now 
an outfit called Trover Hall, of 2126 Grove 
Street, San Francisco 17, California, steps 
forward with an announcement claiming to 
be first in the field. 

As a starter, they announce printing of an 
edition of PUZZLE BOX by one Anthony 
More, and for a list of things to come, five 
more Mores. A little enlightenment as to the 
identity of the author who seems to comprise 
their entire list would now seem to be en 
regie. 

Furthermore, a San Jose outfit calling it- 
self Cheney’s Book Service announces that it 
is peddling Stanton Coblentz’s WHEN THE 
BIRDS FLY SOUTH at sub-retail rates. 
Books, it would seem, are fast becoming the 
order of the day around here. 

Otherwise the fanzine special-stuff picture 
is remarkable for a great burst of energy by 
Forrest J. Ackerman. Not only has he come 
up with a monumental bibliography for THE 
FANTASY FOUNDATION, 1945 edition, but, 
under the somewhat pretentious title of I 
BEQUEATH, has listed his even more monu- 
mental library in a testament to the same 
Los Angeles group. 

Which is only the start. A neat one-page 
arrangement lists the works of the late Fran- 
cis Flagg and, in collaboration with Arthur 
Louis Joquel II, the Ack has spawned an 
elaborate memoriam to H. G. Wells, listing all 
of his published works as well as obituary ar- 
ticles and a somewhat turgid elegy by 
Tigrina. 



106 



Somebody must have slipped him a pill. 
To get out of Los Angeles briefly, here is a 
letter from Walter H. Gillings, of 15 Shere 
Road, Ilford, Essex, England, who is deeply 
concerned with the postwar revival of British 
fandom. Says Mr. Gillings: 

The development of the fantasy field in Great Brit- 
ain, after its curtailment by the war, is now being re- 
sumed in earnest by both British and American pub- 
lishers. Several new projects designed to cater to the 
science and weird fiction reader have already been 
launched, or will be as soon as conditions allow; and 
there is every prospect of a great revival of interest 
in the field over here. 

Already the lack of some medium whereby isolated 
and potential readers may be kept informed of all new 
developments and current publications, and have their 
interest sustained, has made itself felt. I am therefore 
proposing to publish, at quarterly intervals, a news 
magazine and review which will fulfill this need and 
foster the further growth of fantasy by co-ordinating 
all the ramifications of the field on both sides of the 
Atlantic. 

You may remember my Scienti fiction, the British 
Fantasy Review, which did similar service in 1937-38 
and led to the appearance of “Tales of Wonder” and 
“Fantasy.” The proposed new journal would be pro- 
duced on much the same lines, but with a wider scope, 
to embrace the whole field of science and weird fiction 
and their allied activities. It would pay particular at- 
tention to new issues of magazines and books appeal- 
ing to the reader and collector of both types of fiction, 
and serve to enable him to secure such issues through 
channels with which he has lost touch during the war 
years, or has yet to discover. 

Publishers and distributors will thus be afforded a 
valuable medium which will keep them in constant 
touch with an increasing number of readers genuinely 
interested in all they have to offer. It is intended that 
the magazine, provisionally entitled FANTASY RE- 
VIEW, shall circulate to a minimum of 1,000 sub- 
scribers (British and American) as from the first issue, 
planned for publication in October next. This circu- 
lation, though comparatively small, will undoubtedly 
increase as the journal’s influence extends, and it is 
hoped that it will appear more frequently once it has 
become established. 

It will not be the usual type of amateur fan maga- 
zine, but will endeavor to attain the highest possible 
standard of production and reader-interest. It will 
feature book and magazine reviews, interviews with 
fantasy writers and editors, and articles by experts 
covering every aspect of the field here and in the 
U.S.A. Incidentally, it would do much to renew and 
promote the friendly international contacts which 
have contributed so much to the progress of the field 
in the past. 

Obviously, this project, though assured of the sup- 
port of all concerned in the redevelopment of the 
magazine medium on this side, must rely for much of 
its success on the goodwill of American publishers and 
editors, to whom we are indebted for their ready co- 
operation in former years. At least, we should be glad 
to receive from them regular advance details of their 
forthcoming issues and other items of interest to fan- 
tasy followers, for publication in our columns — until 
when they will, naturally, be treated with the strictest 
confidence. 

The magazine will probably consist of 20pp., including 
six advertisement pages, three of which have already 
been booked for the first issue. Copy and payment are 
not required until we are preparing for press. On re- 
ceiving your reaction to our proposals, we shall com- 
municate with you further. 

Subscription rates to FANTASY REVIEW will be 
2s.0d. per year, or 6d. per single copy, post free; in 
U.S.A., 50c. per year, or 15c per single copy, post free. 
The subscription list will not be opened until Septem- 
ber, when we shall be circulating an announcement 
concerning the magazine to some 2,000 potential sub- 
scribers. 

Well, here’s wishing Mr. Gillings luck and 
subscribers. And now to the fanzines them- 
selves. 



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The list is spotty this time, with ACOLYTE 
and VOM missing, to name just two of the 
erstwhile regulars. In fact, only seven ama- 
teur efforts win an A rating, while fifteen 
wallow among the B’s. Come, come, ladies 
and gentlemen, is this postwar progress? 

Well, let’s take a look at them and see. 

CANADIAN FANDOM, 9 MacLennan Avenue, 
Toronto 5, Ontario. Editor, Beak Taylor. Pub- 
lished irregularly. 5c per copy or 6 copies 25c. 

Moderately amusing copy (with the exception of the 
overtocalized and therefore unfunny saga of Mason’s 
springtime in Montreal) is here marred by some of 
(he least amusing and most poorly reproduced cartoon 
comics on fanzine record. Appeal to Canadian fans, 
which is, after all the mag’s purpose, is high, however. 
The Sarge doesn’t know why it isn’t better than it is. 

CYGNI, 68 Madbury Road, Durham, New 
Hampshire. Editor, Benson Perry. 10c per copy, 
3 for 25c, 7 copies 50c. Published irregularly. 

Well, Perry finally dug himself a cover and very 
neat it is too. It seems possible that he takes the 
Shaver hoax a trifle seriously, but his printing a state- 
ment by the Shaver in question makes for solid con- 
troversial stuff. Other copy, including Bart Jameson’s 
autobiography, is up to snuff, but what was the point 
of Sneary’s alleged cartoon on page 9? 

FANTASY ADVERTISER, (Nos. 3 & 4), 628 
South Bixel Street, Los Angeles 14, California. 
Editor, Gus Willmorth. Published irregularly. 
5c per copy, 6 copies 25c. 

Most competent guide book to fan and prozine sales 
and other swappable or purchaseable material extant. 
No fanzine publisher should be without one, as it does 
not confine Itself to sales and auctions but gives invalu- 
able typographical hints as well. Heartily endorsed. 

ROCKETS, 469 Duane Street, Glen Ellyn, Illi- 
nois. Editor, R. L. Farnsworth. Published quar- 
terly. $4.00 per year, 3 years $10.00. 

Despite its newspaper format, this certainly has won 
its A rating with palms. Current issue follows familiar 
and interesting pattern, with the usual drawings and 
diagrams of space ships to come. Long articles pro and 
con atomic power for such vessels, by Robert Lee Morre 
and George A. Whittington respectively, make up a fine 
controversial letter page. Some of you may remember 
how the Sarge blasted the early issues of ROCKETS. 
He has had to do a lot of backtracking since. 

SHANGRI L’AFFAIRES, 637% South Bixel 
Street, Los Angeles 14, California. Editor, Charles 
Burbee. Published 7 times yearly. Price 10c per 
copy, 3 for 25c, 6 for 50c. 

With Burbee back at a helm that Is definitely not 
wieldy, SHANGRI L’AFFAIRES takes its 32nd issue to 
present a running account of the Faciflcon, shunting all 
other effluvia to the rear of the mag. All in all it is 
reminiscent of that issue of tire N YORKER containing 
John Hersey’s hunk of Hiroshima. Brrrrr! 

SUN SPOTS, 9 Bogert Place, Westwood, New 
Jersey. Editor, Gerry de la Ree. Published ir- 
regularly. Free to contributors. 

Editor de la Ree tackles Farnsworth and his ROCK- 
ETS in the 38th issue of this poii-perennial and achieves 
that take-off feeling. He also contributes another vig- 
nette on Weinbaum which may or may not be a trifle 
pretentious. Sam Moskewitz has more of Weinbaiunia, 
Joe Kenndy chews another bit of hard-to-replace cloth 
off the seat of the Sarge’s breeches and Manly Well- 
man postscripts an erudite item on his Shonokin ami*. 
A11 in all, one of the best fanzines the Sarge has yet 
seen. 

VAMPIRE, 84 Baker Avenue, Dover, New Jer- 
sey. Editor) Joe Kennedy. Published irregularly. 
10c per copy, 3 for 25c, 12 for $1.00. 

Good issue of the Kennedy special, with Chldsey, d* 
la Ree, Inman, Streiff and others doing their com- 



petent stuff. Howl of the issue is the issue Walter 
Harwood takes over Edmund Wilson’s derogatory views 
of Lovecraft. He believes that Mr. Wilson’s “endocrine 
glands have acquired their own peculiar balance from 
too many hours spent in a library. ...” And after 
Memoirs of Hecate County . . . now really, Walter! 
Kennedy rates the howl of the month on that one. 
Go ahead and howl, Joe. 



All mediocre things must end, it seems, so 
on to the B-list, which is more remarkable 
for quantity than quality. This, it seems, is 
not a notable era — but then, fanzines usually 
slump off toward the end of the year. Maybe 
they’ll pick up again . . . maybe. 

COSMIC NEWS-LETTER, 101-02 Northern Blvd., 
Corona, N. Y. Editor, James V, Taurasi. Published 
weekly. 5c per copy, 6 for 25c. A welcome develop- 
ment of the old-fashioned cardzine is this four-page 
brochure. Well packed with fan and pro information. 

FANTASY PICTORIAL, 514 West Vienna Avenue, 
Milwaukee 12, Wis. Editor, Bob Stein. Price 3c. Some 
rather blotchily clever heckto-pix symbolic of some- 
thing or other share with some shaggy-dog left wing- 
isms the backsides of papers printed for a Badger 
Biological Supply Company, also of Milwaukee. Do 
tell! 

FANEWS, 1443 Fourth Avenue South, Fargo, N. D. 
Editor, Walter Dunkelberger. Published irregularly. 
2c per sheet, 55 sheets for $1.00. Up to snuff, that’s 
enough. And, contrary to rumor widespread in fan- 
dom, Dunk didn’t die. He wants this fact known for 
some reason. Swell stuff that needs only a binding to 
bound into the A list for keeps. 

FANTASY TIMES, 101-02 Northern Blvd., Corona, 
N. Y. Editor, James V. Taurasi. Published weekly. 5c 

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THE H OR FANATION (that’s how it looks to us. 
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Deutsch. Published irregularly. l%c in stamps. What- 
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KAY-MAR TRADER (Nos. 5 & 7), 1028 3rd Avenue 
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LUNACY, 1115 San Anselmo Avenue, San Anselmo, 
Cal. Editor, Jawge Caldwell. Published (?) irregu- 
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cute, it might turn into a good general -interest fanzine. 
As it is — words fail! 

MARTIAN NEWS LETTER, 548 North Dellrose, 
Wichita 6, Kansas. Editor, Telis Streiff. Published Jr- 
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coat of many colors that seems pre-occupied with the 
thought of the next war. But who isn’t? 

MERCURY, 548 North Dellrose, Wichita 6, Kansas. 
Editor, Telis Streiff. Published irregularly. 3c per 
sheet, six sheets 10c. Another fanzine bursting out of 
its diapers. 

MUTANT, 4005 Webb, Detroit 4, Mich. Editor, Ben 
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PSFS NEWS, 3507 North Suydenham Street, Phila- 
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The dignified little “Gazette of Philadelphia Fandom” 
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SLANTASY, Dorothy, N. J. Editor, A. Budrys. Pub- 
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SPACELING, 119 Woodland Avenue, Coatesville, Pa. 
Editor, Howard G. Allen. Published irregularly. Free. 
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TESTING, 1-2-3-4 68 Madbury Rd. Durham, N. H. 
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UH BED CBOSS 




110 









meet the 

Cluthor 



M URRAY LEINSTER is what might 
be called an “old science fiction 
hand.” His ingenious inversions of 
accepted scientific theory and his imagina- 
tive contemplation of the possible results of 
such inversions (to say nothing of their 
causes) have enthralled readers of STF for 
more years than their author cares to con- 
sider in front of his mirror while shaving. 

But the author is more than a mere juggler 
of formulae. He is the possessor of a first- 
rate creative sense of dramatic story values 
as well as of sharper and more whimsical 
insight into human behavior. And he knows 
how to write prose with the easy fluidity that 
comes only of long experience. 

But so often has his biography been briefed 
in the departments of STF magazines that he 
is, in truth, beginning to feel a certain lurking 
ennui toward his own life story. In short, to 
him, Murray Leinster on Murray Leinster is 
very old hat. 

Therefore he has, in the following para- 
graphs, given us a brief biography of his 
LAWS OF CHANCE and the motives that 
caused him to write it. And since the story 
deals with the universal urge to find a sure 
thing, it seems to us a highly interesting de- 
parture from the orthodox magazine thumb- 
nail sketch. 

Says the Leinster: 



A long time ago I got cured of any inclination 
to gamble because I tried to use my head. I got 
technical and dug into the laws of -chance, so — I 
thought — I could gamble intelligently. And ulti- 
mately I wrote LAWS OF CHANCE because 
they’re the most irritating natural laws in all 
the cosmos. They ought to be set to work, but 
we can’t do a thing with them. 

You can take advantage of all the other laws 
of nature and accomplish things, but the laws of 
chance simply mess things up. Learn them, and 
playing poker turns to bookkeeping, shooting 
craps is an exercise in mental arithmetic, drop- 
ping coins in a slot-machine is dumb, while 
horse-playing is crazy! But play poker or shoot 
craps or play slot-machines or the ponies with- 
out regard to the laws of chance and you’re just 

(Turn page] 

111 



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another sucker. Did I hear you say “So what?” 

So why don’t we do something about it? All 
the other things we’ve learned have done us 
some good. We learned the laws of mechanics 
and chemistry and thermodynamics and elec- 
tricity and we made a civilization. Then we 
learned some of the laws of nuclear physics and 
made atom bombs which seem likely to blow it 
all up again. But why are the laws of chance so 
useless? 

They’re exact, they’re infallible and they’re in- 
furiating. If I mix some of this and some of that, 
I know I’ll blow myself up. If I arrange wires 
and condensers and dinkuses this way and that, 
I know I can tune in radio programs and learn all 
about body odor and bleeding gums. If I climb 
up a steep snow- covered hill and put on skis I 
can slide ail the way down to the bottom again. 

I can use the laws of chemistry and electricity 
and gravity and all the rest. But the laws of 
chance tell me that if I toss a coin a thousand 
times, it will come heads just five hundred times, 
plus or minus half a dozen. They tell me nothing 
else. I can’t use ’em. All I can do is prove ’em. 
So. . . . 

If we can apply chemical laws to stop undesir- 
able chemical actions — see galvanized iron and 
chromium plating— and electrical laws to stop 
electricity — see lightning-rods — and apply the 
laws of hydraulics to prevent floods and even use 
fire to fight fire — why can’t we apply the laws of 
chance to hold off bad luck or bring about good? 
Dammit, we should! Why not? 

So there you are. LAWS OF CHANCE is a pic- 
ture of what we ought to be able to do, even if 
we can’t do it at the moment. It’s propaganda for 
a Science of Chance, by which we would use the 
forces which produce such predictable results, 
just as we use other forces whose results we can 
foresee. There should be a Science of Chance, 
just as there is a science of electricity or aerody- 
namics or nuclear physics. It’s time we got start- 
ed developing it. Has anybody any ideas? 

Now if somebody could only apply such 
science to horses — and jockeys, and trainers 
AND the weather and track conditions which 
so frequently upset the best-laid advance 
dope — some of us might get somewhere. How 
about it, Murray? 

Introducing Margaret St. Clair 



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It is not customary to enlarge upon the 
lives of the authors of short stories in this de- 
I partment (don’t ask us why, but there it is). 
; However, Margaret St. Clair, author of THE 
! SOMA RACKS, is a brand-new author to the 
I STF field and one whose work you will see 
frequently in future issues of this magazine. 

Furthermore, she introduces a new, differ- 
ent and highly sophisticated note into what 
has all-too-often been a “Gee whiz!” and 
“Blast ’em with a 4-ay-gun” chamber of mod- 
1 ern fiction. Her subtle, oblique style with its 
| deceptive appearance of simplicity moves 
i along in a well-mannered fashion that ap- 
| proaches naivete until — whammy! — the hid- 
den charge within it detonates. 

112 




At this point, the reader is apt to grab the 
edge of his chair with both hands and hang on 
tightly. Not since the writing days of the 
late H. H. Munro (Saki) has anyone produced 
quite this effect. 

But let’s leave discussion of Margaret St. 
Clair to Margaret St. Clair. She speaks of 
herself as follows: 

I’ve been reading science-fiction, off and on, 
since I was a very young sprout indeed, but the 
bunch of mss. I sent you was my first attempt at 
writing it. The immediate cause of my outburst 
was that I was smarting under too many rejec- 
tions of my detective and other stories, and 
thought it would be a pleasant change to be re- 
jected by a different bunch of people. 

Then, when the first story proved to be so 
much fun to write, I went ahead with others. 
Certainly I had little hope of selling them. I 
should say that the reason why so few women 
write science-fiction is the one which restrained 
me hithertofore, i.e., a feeling that they cannot 
compete successfully in it. 

About myself, I was born in Kansas, went to 
school there and in California and have a degree 
from the University of California. At one time 
after my marriage I propagated the carnations 
and other plants for our nursery and played 
foster mother to litter after litter of puppies, but 
at present I am doing little beside writing and 
my own low quality brand of housekeeping. I 
live on a hill across the bay from San Francisco 
with my husband and my two dachshunds, Ninel 
v. Walsungen-Haus and Teckelheim Prinz Caff 
Boy. They have fleas just like ordinary dogs 
though. 

My husband, by the way, thought THE SOMA 
RACKS was very amusing. Some people can’t 
seem to realize when a shoe fits. . . . Just at 
present I’m working on another mystery yarn, 
but when I’ve suffered through it to the end, I’ll 
probably try some more science fiction slanted 
your way. 

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longer life! Yet the new “Eveready’” 
battery still costs only 10c. 

NATIONAL CARBON COMPANY. INC. 

80 EAST 12nd STREET, NEW YORK 17, N.Y. 
Vail of Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation 

-V i ! ; t: 0H3 

; uflt.ee pr&incte of .\ution<\l Cqftori Company, /no. 



1946 



93% MORE 
ENERGY 

Nearly twice the 
electric energy . . . 
almost two times 
longer life That’s 
today’s high-energy 
"Eveready” flash- 
light battery. 



TRADE -MARK 



FLASHLIGHT BATTERIES 







Another scan 

by 



cape!736